Battery Set Compendium (BSC) – Greg Hunolt

The BSC is a ‘first stop’ source for information about early battery set radios and the companies that made them. The BSC contains as much information as is practical about the widest possible range of companies and radio types, and points to (without attempting to duplicate) sources of greater depth, such as the books by Alan Douglas and Eric Wenass’, articles published in AWA publications (Old Timers’ Bulletin, the AWA Journal, and AWA Reviews) and Radio Age.

The scope of the BSC is early vacuum tube battery apparatus and complete sets from roughly 1909 through 1929 (excluding automobile and ‘farm’ radios), including kits as well as factory assembled sets. The BSC includes early ‘modules’, such as detector units, amplifier units, tuner units, etc., that were connected together in various combinations to comprise complete sets, as well as complete sets, providing a view of the evolution of the technology. Crystal sets are outside of the scope of the BSC but references to crystal detector units used as components of a ‘modular’ receiver will be included (and some vacuum tube radios included crystal detectors).

The BSC provides flexible information retrieval capabilities intended to meet the needs of battery set collectors. Users may search the BSC’s database for information about companies and/or radio types, and produce detailed reports about individual companies or radio types, or summary listings of companies and radio types. The BSC is not a price or value guide.

The BSC is available from the WARCI website at no cost (and also on CD). I hope that in exchange you will contribute your ideas, criticisms, and suggestions for how the BSC can be improved. I hope that you might provide information about companies and sets that the BSC is missing, especially local companies that did not advertise in the national publications or otherwise become well-known. The BSC package includes forms for company and radio type information that may be helpful for capturing information for the BSC.

Please send comments, etc., to me by email or contact me write to me, Greg Hunolt, N5412 State Hwy 57, Plymouth, WI 53073. Contact me if you experience any difficulties with the BSC; it is not a finished product! I will notify you when updates to the BSC are available if you indicate a wish to receive them.

The BSC package consists of a Microsoft Excel workbook which holds the BSC database and information retrieval software and the BSC Users’ Guide, as both a PDF and a Microsoft Word document, and a “readme” text file that I encourage you to read before attempting to start up the BSC. In order to use the BSC you must have Excel on your system, and you will need the (free) Acrobat Reader or Word to read the Users’ Guide. The BSC has been developed and tested using Excel 2003, 2007 and 2002 running with Windows XP and 2000. (The BSC has not been tested with the Microsoft Vista operating system, but I am blissfully unaware of any reason why it would not work with Vista.) I have not been able to test the BSC on a Macintosh platform; the BSC detects whether it is running on PC or Macintosh, and if on Macintosh it makes some adjustments because of the differences between the Macintosh and PC versions of Excel. Macintosh users are encouraged to tell me of any difficulties encountered.