The magic of analogue electronic technology

Similar to, but not the same as, my radio circa 1972

There was a magic to analogue technology, that is objectively absent from the digital. As an obvious example (that many discovered from themselves after many years of denial): an analogue-recorded vinyl LP record captures that which is recorded in a more complete and emotionally-engaging fashion, than does a digitally-recorded CD. 

Similarly, the old dial-tuned radio sets (short wave/ medium wave/ long-wave) had a magical quality about them, for those susceptible to such enchantment - something that was almost independent of whatever was being listened-to. 

An indelible and evocative memory of my early teen years was playing with the switches and dials of my black, vinyl-cased Philips transistor radio with earplug while lying on or in bed, just prior to sleep.

It had to be night; because at night, the atmospheric conditions favoured long-distance transmission of radio signals.  

What I most remember was scanning the short-wave and long-wave bands, seeking foreign voices from unknown places. 

For some reason, I most liked to listen to German speakers; although what I assumed to be Russian was also an exotic attraction - bringing a frisson that "the authorities" would disapprove, and I probably "ought not" to be listening to it*. 

Sometimes, somehow, messages would drift across the Atlantic, and I might hear snatches of American or Canadian accents. 

*Some things don't change, and now the UK blocks digital media from that nation. It was a further advantage of analogue radio that such top-down control could not easily be achieved. 

With short-wave, there was the phenomenon of the signal waxing and waning; so that I would hear a snatch of speaking, then it would fade - and I could almost never find that same source twice. With long-wave there was a steady signal, but a lot of background interference. 

I was also fascinated by the strange sounds, sometimes high pitched and morse-code-like. But I especially liked a low-pitched buzzing that was modulating in its quality; because someone had once told me that one such sound (on the SW frequency) was the planet Jupiter... 

(This was not necessarily completely fanciful.) 

I was forever half listening for this particular sound, and if I found it (or something sufficiently similar) - I would listen for minutes, as if trying to understand what the planet was telling me or "the world".

And, such is the nature of these things that I would always forget where on the dial I had found this Jupiter sound; so I couldn't ever go back again the next night, but would have to start my search afresh.  

Something about the simpler analogue technology made this experience possible - partly because the dodgy quality of the audio created space for the imagination, but partly also because the experience was very direct. 

The signal made hundreds or thousands of miles away, came directly to the little device in my bed - maybe bouncing off the ionosphere en route? - so there was an almost person-to-person quality in the experience.

And the wave movements generated by the person speaking into a microphone were translated into the movements of the diaphragm in my earpiece; again in a very direct fashion. 

I never had a "crystal set" radio of my own, and they were unsuited to bedtime, under blankets, usage - but these were even simpler, more miraculous and magical than my little transistor radio; because they did not even require a battery! 

Somehow, the power of the radio waves, generated so far away, and sleeting through us all, all of the time - was by itself and without an amplifier, enough to move the diaphragm when intercepted by the "diode"! 

It strikes me that all this stuff could be elaborated into a metaphor for what has changed and been lost over the past fifty-plus years - a microcosm of societal and technological change and its effect on the human imagination: but I shall leave that to you!

Note: A few years ago, I got another small analogue radio with a variety of SW bands; but this doesn't seem to work as it once did. Almost everything is drowned in crackles; perhaps due to interference from the many electronic devices, light bulbs, etc. around the house, and indeed everywhere else. Where once we had faint but meaningful voices, we now have a choice between curated and processed digital media, or electromagnetic chaos. 

Further Note: A friend of my father's (a dentist) was a Radio Ham. He had his own radio transmitter in an office at home, and a personal fifty foot aerial outside the house (plus the requisite official permissions needed for these). We visited one afternoon, and he demonstrated the equipment, and how he could converse with other Hams around the world. I found the whole thing intensely exciting, and firmly resolved to do the same myself as soon as could afford the kit. But, of course, never did.