Browse the earliest Radio Shack catalogs.

[wb1aij]

Check out this website & you can view & turn the pages of old Radio Shack catalogs from their first catalog in 1939. Man, did they ever have alot of COOL stuff in those days.
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html

[K3ZS]

I like the oldest ones when they actually had radios in the catalog.

[K5UJ]

tnx vy much for posting this.  It has already paid off for me because in flipping through the 1953 RS catalog I found Glassmike plasticon silicone fluid H.V. caps in hermetically sealed glass tubes.  Just last night I was looking in the WRL 755 VFO I purchased from K0WRX and I was looking at these components I had never seen before -- looked like weird inductors to me -- turns out they were these Glassmike caps.  I guess I can leave them alone.

73

Rob
K5UJ

[k4kyv]

Does anyone know how to save this to disc?  That website probably won't stay up for ever.  I tried clicking on "Save page as" but it didn't work.

[K1JJ]

Nice find.

I found it interesting to see the first retail transistors between 1951-1955 costing $17-$27 for some of the simpler ones. That's BIG money back then - probably equivalent to over $150 today for one device. Can you imagine the anguish of these early experimenters... how easy it must have been to blow them out?  

Even the crap selenium diodes and and germanium transistors were big bux.

Radio Shack in the 40's sure had lots of radio parts. They were a real builder's store back then.

T

[WA1GFZ]

Tom,
I bought my first bag of transistors in the 60s. I built a few circuits that didn't work. one day I freaked out and cut the cases open to find no transistor die inside.
Back to tubes for a long time...man I could have ended up like Todd. ERRRR that hpsdr stuff is bogus

[K1JJ]

Tom,
I bought my first bag of transistors in the 60s. I built a few circuits that didn't work. one day I freaked out and cut the cases open to find no transistor die inside.

HA!  What a bag job that was.  Sounds like factory rejects.  That sure can sour anyone on solid state.

My similar experience was building my first HB project - a one tube shortwave regen receiver. I could not get it to work and finally gave up.  Much later on I discovered that the 67 1/2 volt B battery was deader than a stone. I had bought it from a friend for $1 - his OM was a TV service man so had lots of stuff in his cellar. I was afraid to touch my tongue to it, so had to wait til I got a VTVM months later.... [sigh]   

We ALL start out as totally dumbass JNs.



T

[w1vtp]

What a find!  Thanks.  Clever way of "flipping the pages."  Hope it does stay up -- a treasure

Al

[K5UJ]

Remember Poly-Paks?  After seeing the RS catalogs and the ads in the backs of the old Handbooks I'm starting to think 75% of hams back then built gear and everyone at least built from kits from time to time.

[W2PFY]

Does anyone know how to save this to disc?  That website probably won't stay up for ever.  I tried clicking on "Save page as" but it didn't work.

I had no  problem saving the page with Firefox Don.

[K5UJ]

Does anyone know how to save this to disc?  That website probably won't stay up for ever.  I tried clicking on "Save page as" but it didn't work.

I had no  problem saving the page with Firefox Don.

this with your linux box?  good deal.

[W2PFY]

Nope, just the pain old Mary Jane.

[k4kyv]

I use Firefox and tried to save the 1939 1st issue, but just got a cryptic error message.  Later, looking over the website, it says it is not available for printing or saving because of copyright issues.  But if it will display on the screen, there must be some way to save it.

[ke7trp]

The 1956 catalog is fun. Lots of ham stuff.  Elmac, Johnson, National, hallicrafters ect..  How about that SR500 Console...   Or the Johnson killowatt.   Lots of Vintage mics in there from EV.   

What a Great find.   

C

[K5UJ]

I was able to save the 1956 catalog to my desktop on my mac in the webarchive format.

%cd Desktop/
%ls -la 1956RadioShackCatalog.webarchive
-rw-r--r--@ 1 logan  staff  362452 Oct 30 06:18 1956RadioShackCatalog.webarchive

Note to the copyright obsessed:  I shall now delete this from my machine.

Rob

[KB2WIG]

"  Note to the copyright obsessed:  I shall now delete this from my machine."

The website says that it is not affiliated with the Rat shack co.......   Is/was the old Cat in the public domain??


klc

[K5UJ]

"  Note to the copyright obsessed:  I shall now delete this from my machine."

The website says that it is not affiliated with the Rat shack co.......   Is/was the old Cat in the public domain??


klc

I don't know.  Don said there were copyright issues so I posted that because who knows who's reading this thing and I didn't want to get myself or the website in trouble with the Radio Shack catalog people (or their lawyer(s)). 

The website looks so well done I imagine it will be around because it looks like someone went to a lot of time and effort over it.  Professional looking sites like that usually involve a commitment to keep it up online.  The fly by night ones are more like a white page with a list of pdf links on some service like google docs.   If it were like that I might be more inclined to do some selective downloading and storing    This one has its own domain radioshackcatalogs.com or some such.

Rob

[ke7trp]

The catalogs are not protected. The Guys work by placing them into that format is.  Maybe contact him and ask for them. He probably does not want people to have them on other websites and might not care if a Ham has them on his Computer. Remember.. People are sending in the catalogs for the website.

C

[WA3VJB]

I was surprised to remember quite a few of those catalog covers from the 1970s.

It was pretty cool in those days to be on their mailing list because they would occasionally include a coupon you could clip for a free flashlight.  They really didn't care if you presented three or four coupons along the way, and somewhere I still have a couple of their D-Cell flashlights.

One Christimas I got a DX-120 receiver, a lesser version of the DX-150A.  I scraped together some grass-cutting money from the previous summer, and the store manager took back the 120 at full credit toward the 150A, which would eventually be my Novice receiver when I was WN4DKG.

The receiver was so broad that when used on CW I had to train myself to listen for pitch among ALL the stations I could hear with one dial setting.

So that page reminded me of that radio, a little 10 watt stereo amp, which drove, my SOLO-103 bookshelf speakers, and eventually a "real" stereo @ 45W IHF that remains in the family, and so on.

Nowadays. What:  battery powered R/C cars and cellphones.