Wes Schum officially started Central Electronics in 1950.
As a young man of thirty, with huge ambition and a thirst
for adventure, he saw single-sideband as a major technological
shift for amateur and commercial radio interests. Actually
a small group of single-sideband experimenters were scattered
about America and, through their homebrewed efforts, became
fast friends even while at times being commercial competitors.
In 1954, Wes formally met Joe Batchelor at an Illinois-area
hamfest. Joe had brought his new homebrew mobile SSB rig
and remotely tunable antenna for Wes to check out and from
that hamfest sprung a business relationship that lasted
for eight years. Yet, Wes lived in Chicago and Joe was in
Walnut Grove, Georgia. How best to communicate innovative
ideas other than eat the high costs of long distance calls
(or as Joe called it, Ol’Man Bell)?
Fortunately, another company in Chicago was making a device
called Soundscriber. This machine allowed one to home-record
conversations on small, flexible vinyl discs. These were
sized to fit special mailer envelopes so the spoken word
for up to 30 minutes at a time could be exchanged between
distant parties. This was the solution Wes and Joe used
to formulate product plans and ideas…at least until Joe
relocated to Chicago in 1957.
I have uncovered a number of these discs from Wes Schum’s
files. Of course, since they originated from Joe, the conversation
is one-way, from Joe as the originator. Sadly, I was unable
to find any like recordings originated from Wes in Joe’s
files. But, what an exciting and interesting position to
have … essentially a fly-on-the-wall hearing the ideas these
two creative powerhouses behind Central Electronics were
conjuring up in between Fall of 1955 and Spring of 1957.
The first thing to notice is how clear and distinct the
audio quality was of these little Soundscriber discs. Consider
also, these were sent over a considerably long distance
by US Mail, were played multiple times and then stored and
all but forgotten for fifty years. Others things to ponder…in
October 1955 Joe and Wes were planning a “super duper” receiver
that had very high dynamic range, would be designed for
single sideband, used bandpass no-tune frontend filters
and mixers having very high linearity. Remember, this isn’t
1970…it was 1955!
Also, the original 100R receiver design effort was in parallel
with the product we all know and appreciate: the 100V transmitter!
And, Wes’ original idea for the 100V … using Joe’s broadband
coupler design … was for a 2-30MHz continuous coverage job
having eleven one-octave bandpass couplers. The actual production
100V had couplers designed for only the five popular ham
bands and one for use on a 1MHz band segment of the owner’s
choice. Clearly, this illustrated a decision made to cut
production costs and complexity.
There are many more nuggets of information contained here,
but I will leave those to your skills and imagination to
enjoy. So, step back into the Fall of 1955 and listen to
some of the creative thoughts of two young men who helped
changed the nature of HF radio communications. (All recordings
below are in mp3 format)
Recording 1 - Recording
2 - Recording 3 - Recording
4 - Recording 5 - Recording
6 - Recording 7 - Recording
8 - Recording 9
Recording 10 - Recording
11 - Recording 12 - Recording
13 - Recording 14 - Recording
15 - Recording 16