03-31-07

Project Philco

Welcome to Project Philco's little corner of the website. First, a little background. This is a 1937 Model 37-675 Philco self-standing tube radio. It was purchased in late 1936, Philco released radio lines like cars in those days. Each year's model line was released in June of the year before. So to mince words, this radio was built in 1936 placing its age at 71 years old.

The history of this piece is interesting. In 1936 (as it was remembered: "close to the first snowfall." So around early November) this radio was purchased from the Sears-Roebuck store on what is now Pleasant St. in Claremont, NH. (In fact, the old painted SEARS sign on the side of the building is still visible. I will take a picture of it if I remember.) The radio was purchased by a farmer living on the outskirts of town. The radio's selling price was $150 dollars, a significant amount in those days. (Only 7,200 radios were made.)

The radio was loaded into the back of Chevy pickup truck by the farmer and his 15-year old son Ervin. The radio was placed in the livingroom of the farm house located on present day River Road in Claremont (The road did not exist then, it was farm field. The road is where the house stood.) and the radio remained there for 70 years.

A fun piece of history for this radio; Ervin remembers listening to a broadcast the night of October 30th, 1938. A very famous CBS broadcast of "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", Orson Wells radio program doing a dramatization of the H.G. Wells story, "The War of the Worlds". This broadcast changed the face of radio when it scared many into believing a real alien invasion was taking place. Personally, I have been an avid fan of Orson Wells work. So upon discovering this event in the radio's history, it's fate was set in stone and was going in my living room.

The next major event for this radio was its move to the cattle barn across from the farm house. Ervin remembered something breaking on the radio and it was brought to the barn and a new radio was purchased. Luckily, this Philco escaped destruction as the house later burned down. This Philco remained in the barn (literally 100 yards from where the house stood) until 2006.

Enter me... I discovered the radio in the barn in process of helping Ervin, now an elderly gentleman, because the barn was to be torn down. Ervin told me the history that I just now told you and sold me the radio for $10 dollars. (Mostly I wanted it for the Orson Wells factor.)

So for the second time in its life, it was loaded into the back of another Chevy pickup truck. (Although I doubt it was an S10 the first time.) My first plan was to restore the radio and build an AM transmitter (consider that this radio had only five bands; 530-1600 kc, 1.58-4.75 mc, 4.7-7.4 mc, 7.35-11.6 mc & 11.5-18.2 mc) to get music to it. But after much work trying to repair the internals.... There was just to much physical damage. The main metal board was cracked all over, tube holders were smashed, and many parts were plain missing.

Well... now what? My geek got the better part of me. Instead of restoring the radio, let's make it more high tech. So after much work refinishing the wood, and disassembling an old pentium 3 computer I had laying around collecting dust, the genesis of the project emerged. A plan to turn a 1936 radio into a 2006 Digital Multimedia device running Linux that still looks like a working 1936 radio.

• Apache/PHP interface for access through a Web Browser
• Audio Link to turntable
• Remove Monitor from top
• Add XM receiver