[Milsurplus] Re: [The WS No19] Dating the term "Walkie Talkie"

[Hue Miller]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Claudia & Reed Park" <reedpark@nbnet.nb.ca>


> Interesting walkie talkie comments at the following site.
> 
> http://sitka.triumf.ca/morgan/dlhings/index.html
> 
> 7 3
> Reed   -   VE1NU

This website, as well as Vancouver Sun and other Canadian newspaper
accounts exerpted therein, are rife with misinformation. I will write to
the Sun to advise them of their many errors in the article.
 
To start with, a suitcase-sized HF portable radio is NOT termed a "wallkie
talkie". Seeing as the US Forest Service already had several such portable
radios dating from the early 1930s, i do not see how Hings could expect to
patent portable operation. Perhaps he was thinking that to include the batteries
in the same cabinet, was somehow patentable.

The "Staz 2" radio illustrated on the website is Italian, not German. It does not
require reading past the original Radio News magazine caption ( R N, Feb. 1944 )
to discern that, so i wonder why the website's author had difficulty.

Now to quote:
"The 'walkie talkie' is Don Hings' most well known invention. The earliest versions
were designed as portable field radios for the bush pilots of Consolidated Mining."
My comment above applies, for portable pack sets with wire antennas.

"The first true walkie talkie was built by Hings in 1937...."
Seeing as the US Army had in full field use, its walkie talkies BC-222 and BC-322,
in 1938, in other words, full standard issue, it's questionable as to whether Don Hings
design work predated the Signal Corps design. 
Also, i mention that the Japanese army's Type 94 Mark 6 portable, man carried radio,
25-50 MHz, voice and tone-telegraph, dates from 1934. This radio could be powered
either from a carried, handcranked generator or batteries carried in a backpack. ( Type
94 roughly translates "Model Year 2594" which is 1934 A.D. or 1934 CE, as it's called
now. )

"The term walkie talkie was coined by journalists reporting on these new inventions during
the war".   The reference i have found is before the US, at least, entered the war, altho the
UK and Canada were already at war. Newspaper journalists may have been ignorant of
advances in the radio field, but the fact is, the US walkie talkies were not secret, an were
regularly pictured in the US press from their entry to the Army arsenal in 1938.

"The first walkie talkies were pretty much ignored by the world until the war broke out in
1939, when they suddenly became a valuable military technology."
I do not understand this statement. The "world" pretty much was ignorant of military
technology, of course, til they had to face it, and use it every day. However, from the
US Army's deployment of the SCR-194/ 195 in 1938, it was clearly portrayed as a valuable
scout/ artillery spotter radio. The Japanese 94-6 set was used in the same manner. Germany
had its 2-man pack set Torn Fu d and Italy had its Staz 2 at the beginnings of the war. Actually
Italy was already using the Staz 2, i think, in its war against Ethiopia in 1937 or 38.

The website has interesting graphics and articles, but really, it was assembled by someone
with no knowledge of radio history. Hings' claims, i don't know what to make of them. I
suppose he wanted his share of the glory too.
Hue Miller