We had our fill of those here, too. The "hot" side of the AC line (if you were lucky, polarized plugs were rare in those days) was connected directly to a 35W4 or some such half wave rectifier tube and later to a selenium half wave rectifier with the other side of the AC line being connected as the negative lead (fortunately NOT to the chassis). Usually, there were a couple of 0.01uf capacitors from each side of the line to the chassis, however. Doubt I need to explain the joys one could experience with that arrangement! And, to top it off, each and every one of those radios proudly bore our UL stamp of approval! They used to call them AC/DC radios because, if you lucked out and got the polarity right, the radio didn't care what the source was as long as it was somewhere near 100 volts DC or RMS. Tom
--- In [email protected], Gordon Cooper <zl...@...> wrote: > > Another quirk. > > > Sixty plus years ago in England, power factor was not > the main concern. Many of the domestic radio receivers > were transformerless and used half-wave rectification to > obtain D.C. for the tubes. A consequence was a fair dose > of D.C. flowing in the street power mains. > > Gordon ZL1KL > Tauranga N.Z. >
