COLIN B. KENNEDY CO. Type 220 Receiver (1921). This two –battery radio was a TRF with regeneration. The Bakelite dial panel is affixed to a beautiful cherry wood cabinet that I refinished with 5 or 6 coats of finger-tip applied varnish. This receiver covered 97 – 1700 kHz. It has one tube whose brightness can be viewed through a round hole covered with a screen.
Tuning is not so simple. The regeneration control mechanically alters the mutual inductance between a detector output coil and the detector input coil. Too much positive feedback produces instability that sounds like a stuck pig! One of the switches selects a tap on the antenna coil, and the other switch selects a tap on the detector output coil. This is truly a Rock and Roll radio. It supported home and auto listening and ships at sea, within months of the advent of commercial radio WKDA in Philadelphia.
The dials of this radio are silver plated, but the contacts seem to be solid silver!
When I worked for Texas Instruments, I encountered this really nice “old” guy in Bay Saint Louis, MS on the way back from Mobile, AL. I bought this radio and the matching amplifier from him. He told me the name of the merchant marine (or was it a coast guard) ship on which this radio once operated. I am not sure but I think that ship’s name was the “USS Magnolia.” A couple of years ago, I learned my Uncle Abraham Gardberg from New Orleans was the “Sparks” on the USS Magnolia which tended light houses in the Gulf of Mexico.
