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Carbide Battery Radio from 1930's - Printable Version

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Carbide Battery Radio from 1930's - bigdog - 07-01-2007

Hi, can anyone give me any information on a Carbide Battery Radio from the 1930's? As a child my mother said that her family had a Carbide Battery Radio. They lived in the South, in Appalachia. I asked her what type of radio it was and she stated something like Carbide Light on the miners cap. I cannot locate any information on this type of radio or any pictures. On the 1930 US Federal Census, her grandfather, stated the family had no radio, so they must have acquired the radio after April 1930. Any help appreciated. Thank you, bigdog

- Raleigh - 07-01-2007

It occurs to me that an early maker of radio batteries was the Union Carbide and Carbon Company. I think they used the name Eveready then; I know they did later, because in the 1950s my Dad worked for them making radio batteries at their plant in Charlotte, NC. Could your mother have remembered the name "carbide" from the battery and mixed it up with the "carbide" of a miner's lamp?

A carbide miner's lamp does not operate on electricity. Instead it uses a chemical reaction between water and calcium carbide to produce acetylene gas, which burns with a very bright flame. The process is described on this web site.

http://www.showcaves.com/english/explain/Gear/CarbideLamps.html

Early cars, before around 1915, used carbide headlamps. You would often see a brass cylinder mounted on the running board. This cylinder had two chambers. The driver would put calcium carbide pellets in the lower chamber and water in the upper one. Water would drip slowly into the carbide compartment, and a hose would carry the resulting acetylene to the headlamps. It is hard to see how this process could run a radio.

Carbide Battery Radios - bigdog - 07-03-2007

Hi , thank you for your reply, and the information. My mother could very well have gotten the two mixed up; ie the carbide miners cap and the carbide radio. It was shortly before she died and she was talking about her childhood and the things around the homeplace. She lived on top of a mountain, in Anderson CO, TN, near a mining camp and her grandfather, and uncles cut timber for the mines. She talked alot about the battery radio they had, and of listening to President Roosevelt's chats, Grand Old Oprey, and Fibber McGee and Molly shows. I know in April 1930 they did not own a radio, but must have purchased it sometime later in the middle or near the end of 1930. She really loved that old radio, and I have been trying to research and find out the type of radio she might have had. I know it had to have been at a cost they could have afforded and most likely a table top radio. I don't believe it was one they had put together themselves. Thank you, bigdog

- Raleigh - 07-04-2007

Bigdog,

Sorry to hear of your mother's passing. How great to have heard those stories while you still could.

As you can see from the Philco gallery, there were a lot of radios made for battery power only back then. I wish you luck tracking down one like your mother would have had.

There might have been electric miner's lamps back then, too. Maybe there were some that used a battery like the large, low voltage A battery of a radio.

Carbide Battery Radio - bigdog - 07-05-2007

Hi, thank you for your reply. Our mother passed some years back but it was very interesting to listen to her stories of her childhood and of listening to the family radio. Most of the old folks have passed on so I doubt I will ever learn the radio model that my great-grandfather had. But my mothers love of and interest in the old radio has sparked our familys interest in old radios. I am trying to research the area mining camp stores to see what kinds or brands of radios they carried in that time period and perhaps I will be able to locate the radio model sold in that particular store in that time period, well hopefully anyway. Thank you, bigdog