An excerpt from the C. Crane Company:
In 1951, fearful of a Soviet attack, and determined to keep U.S. citizens alert, President Truman signed into existence the Control of Electromagnetic Radiation system, or CONELRAD. Back then, controlling electronic radiation meant keeping Soviet planes from tracking targets in the U.S. by tracking radio signals. To keep this from happening, CONELRAD called for commercial radio stations to stop broadcasting immediately when receiving an alert. Only select stations would stay on air, broadcasting on 640 or 1240 kHz.
Between 1953 and 1963, all radios sold in the United States were required to have the two CONELRAD frequencies marked clearly on the dial. If you have older radios in your home, or if you browse through older radios in a flea market, you can identify CONELRAD-era radios from the two small triangular marks on the dial known as CD symbols. These triangles provide a very useful identifying mark for radio collectors. Sometimes the triangles are enclosed in small circles as well.
I've got an old red & white RCA Victor 1-X-3FE that I bought a few years ago just because it looked cool. It's got the marks between 6 & 8 and 11 & 14 on the dial, two triangles in circles. Didn't realized it was quite that old - I was thinking mid-60's.
Then I remembered that my house was built in 1963, and it's got an old Talk-A-Radio in the kitchen that hasn't worked since before I moved in. It also has the CD symbols. Never noticed them before - I guess I thought they were decorative. Way Cool!
Posted by: Guy | 05/07/2006 at 01:48 PM
Lot of cool stuff at conelrad.com
Posted by: Dave Munger | 05/09/2006 at 09:07 PM