[Hallicrafters] Hallicrafters WW II advertising.

[Richard Knoppow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Glen Zook" <gzook at yahoo.com>
To: "William Hawkins" <sgr4436 at yahoo.com>; 
<Hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 2:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Hallicrafters] Hallicrafters WW II 
advertising.


Do you know why Bill Halligan bought the Echophone line?

Answer:

To get a license for the Hazeltine patents. RCA held the 
patents and, for some reason, David Sarnoff would not allow 
Hallicrafters to get a license for the patents. However, 
Echophone had a license and, by purchasing the company, 
Halligan was able to get a license for them. Unfortunately, 
for Sarnoff, he couldn't do anything about Halligan getting 
a license.

Glen, K9STH

     I think this is a confounding of two stories.  Halligan 
could not get a license from RCA for patents it held. 
Hazeltine Labortories had their own patents  and were not 
licensed through RCA. While RCA was formed originally with 
the idea that it would be a clearing house for patents and 
would license any one who was reasonably able to manufacture 
radios successfuly it turned out to be a monopoly.  This was 
not Sarnoff alone but the whole management of RCA who were 
pretty much hold overs from American Marconi and had the 
same ideas of becoming a monopoly. The Navy and others who 
had pushed for an American patent holder were not very happy 
with this but could do nothing about it.  Or rather Owen D. 
Young, the chairman of General Electric, who held 
controlling stock in RCA evidently liked things the way they 
were.  RCA did not want too much compition for its own 
products.  General Electric and Westinghouse were members of 
the RCA club so had access to everything. AT&T and Western 
Electric were cross licensed for vacuum tube patents but 
only for industrial and telephone company use.  WE which was 
one of the companies who was involved with forming RCA sold 
out its interests within a few years of the founding.
    RCA kept many entrapenuers from successfully starting 
radio manufacturing companies.  Art Collins was among them. 
Early Collins transmitters use Amperex tubes with external 
grids because RCA would not grant them a license for 
conventional transmitting tubes for years.
    Echophone had an early license and Halligan bought the 
company to get it.  Before that he had to contract with 
other companies who did have RCA licenses to have his 
products built.
    I don't know too much about Hazeltine patent policies 
except that they were not in the manufacturing business and 
did not need to control competition.  Hazeltine had many 
valuable patents including many held by Harold Wheeler who 
had prehaps a hundred patents in what we would now call 
electronics.  Among Wheelers patents is automatic volume 
control.
    Hallicrafters continued to build equipment under the 
Echophone name until about 1946 (not sure of the exact date) 
when the products were restyled slightly and became 
Hallicrafters and after a short time were discontinued.  The 
Echophone EC series were AC/DC receivers with three bands. 
The S38 increased this to four bands and used a different 
kind of bandspread.  The S-38B and maybe one earlier 
version, got rid of the additional tube used in the earlier 
receivers by using regeneration in the IF to provide a BFO. 
Since the tube used in the earlier receivers as the 
conventional BFO also had a diode suitable for a noise 
limiter the B and later versions no longer had a noise 
limiter.
    I've seen many Echophone receivers but never had one and 
have no idea of their performance.  I did have an S-38B (may 
still have it if I can find it) which is does surprizingly 
well for an essentially minimal short wave receiver.
    There are many books on the history of wireless and 
electronics, particularly in the US. Since RCA was a vital 
part of the history it is well covered.  A good starting 
place is the Linwood Howeth book on the history of 
electronics and communication in the U.S. Navy.  this is 
available on line in a scanned version.  I will find the 
link and post it.  Another excellent but earlier history is 
_Invention and Innovation in the Radio Industry_ MacLauren. 
This one may be hard to find, I don't think it was ever 
reprinted but could be wrong.  I have a half dozen or more 
fairly recent books that cover much of the same history.
     Bill Halligan and Art Collins interest me because both 
started successful businesses in the midst of the depression 
but by appealing to completely different markets.


--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
dickburk at ix.netcom.com