[ARC5] History and Context of the ARC-5 sets

[gordon white]

  To my knowledge, the Type K was strictly a prototype, not  production 
equipment. All the Type K I have seen were hand-made, not production units.
The Type B and D, I think, were sold, though most of those sold were 
actually built under license by manufacturing companies, such as 
Stromberg-Carlson, as A.R.C. was at that time purely a design lab.
The RFL/A.R.C. story is too long to go into here, and my memory will 
need refreshing to put it into print. There were other companies that 
flitted into and out of the story, producing other equipment.

    RFL was the original, re-organized into A.R.C. As the name implies, 
Radio Frequency Laboratories was just a lab. When aircraft radio became 
the prime job, A.R.C. was formed. (RFL had designed entertainment radios 
too)

As we know, there was, early on, a requirement for vhf gear so it was 
natural to want something that would slide into installed SCR-274N or 
AN/ARC-racks. WE built the crystal controlled units but A.R.C. built 
tuneable receivers and transmitters as part of the AN/ARC-5 system. (I 
have two of each)

Of course there was politics involved, but those answers are probably 
not to be found today. I went to the Signal Corps and Wright Field 
files, also NRL, CNMO, BuAer,National Archives, etc. back in the 1960s.

    We know Western Electric was declared an "unresponsive bidder" in 
order to give A.R.C. one of the contracts in the 1930s.

That was politics

- Gordon White