Hammarlund Built
the Best Ham Radios — Then Made One Bad Call
In 1910, a Swedish immigrant named Oscar Hammarlund opened a small
manufacturing shop in a Manhattan loft. Within two decades, his
variable capacitors and radio kits had become industry standards. By
World War Two, nearly ninety percent of all American electronic
military equipment relied on Hammarlund components. The SP-600
receiver became the benchmark for military and commercial operations
worldwide, and amateur radio operators considered Hammarlund the
gold standard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuDbeomSiZU
What Happened to
Hallicrafters? | The Radio Every Boy Heard the World On
In 1933, in the dead center of the Great Depression, a
sixteen-year-old wireless operator from Boston named William J.
Halligan started a radio company in a rented room in Chicago with
nothing but two trucks' worth of parts and a dream. He called it
Hallicrafters — a combination of his own name and the word
handcrafters — because that is exactly what he intended to do: build
the finest shortwave receivers ever made, by hand, one at a time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ikuSL8AA48