This is another of those bits of memorbilia that would have been about in the sixties - a pen that is really an A M radio.
This is the Get Smart version although I suspect there would have probably been variations promoting other sixties spy shows.
It's obviously a simple crystal set and needs no batteries. It uses a clip to attach to any metal object in the room to provide the arieal, but I'd imagine the reception would be a little hit and miss, although the novelty value is what it's about.
I remember an early episode of The Man from UNCLE using a radio transmitter disguised as a cigarette packet using the similar method of attaching the antenna wire to a metal object in the room. That was before UNCLE agents got pen radios!
I had this. I would hook it to the ground spike across the yard, run the wire across the lawn and into my bedroom window. It would get four of five stations. Since it had a decent tuner, they didn't all run together. My older brother bought it through the Johnson & Smith catalog, got tired of it, almost immediately and passed it on to me. It was my main radio for a year or so until I could buy one a transistor radio with an actual amplifier.
ReplyDeletethe circuit is very simple based in galena radio
ReplyDeleteI have one in this sealed condition...when I met Don Adams(a year before he passed)...he took it in his hands--and said "I've never seen this before"....maybe it still has his fingerprints on it. :-)
ReplyDeleteWow, what a meeting Anon. You didn't get the meeting with Don photographed did you?
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