New acquisition

[Chimes]

I posted this over on ARF, and thought I would share it here also.

Several months ago, my neighbor Will, said he had a old console radio purchased in the 1930's by his father he needed to get rid of and knowing I collected old radios asked if I would like to have it. Even sight unseen I said yes. Yesterday Will approached me and said he had finally moved the radio to his front porch and to bring my hand cart over and pick it up.

Here is what was waiting.

http://radioremembered.org/images/10S160/10S160-1.jpg
http://radioremembered.org/images/10S160/10S160-2.jpg

Really nice Zenith 19S160!

I tried to pay him for it, but he wouldn't take anything, just said he wanted it to have a new home where he knew it would be taken care of.

Now, as Paul Harvey would say, "here is the rest of the story".

Back in the 1930, this Will's father worked for the Alexander Film Company here in Colorado Springs. The company was located just about a half mile north of my home. It was at the time, one of the largest film studios in the country. The location is now occupied by a K-Mart and a local TV station is housed in one of the original buildings.

The Alexander Film Company filmed commercials for major companies that were shown in theaters and later on television.

Products would be shipped to the company for filming and often the manufacturer or company did not want to bother with the expense of shipping the item back, so they were given to Alexander Film to do as they please, and the items were often auctioned off to the employees.

This Zenith 10S160 was used to film a Zenith commercial and Will's father purchased it when it was auctioned off in 1937. Will said they listened to short wave all through the WWII years to news of the war.

The Alexandre Film company was also in the aircraft business as the Alexander Aircraft Company. They produced a bi-plane called the Alexander Eaglerock. The reason for going into the aircraft business was because one of the two brothers who founded the company, J. Don Alexander, wanted to equip his sales force with airplanes to expedite the distribution of the advertising films, and it would get attention. I wonder if a salesman refused to get a pilots license would lose his job?

The company still exists today as the Alexander Film and Video company in a different and much smaller location. I plan on visiting sometime soon and see if they have any archives from the original company. It would be nice to have a picture of the ad of this radio.

Here is a link with more information on the company and a couple of links to youtube of videos of some of their ads.

http://library.ppld.org/SpecialColle...ns/mss0056.asp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU-A7...843980&index=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov_z6...eature=related

Ariel photo of the complex.
http://radioremembered.org/images/10...rFilmArial.jpg

Front door.
http://radioremembered.org/images/10...r%20Film-1.jpg

[marty59]

That is beautiful!! What ever you do, do not turn it on without at least changing out the electrolytics and making sure the rectifier tube is ok. Pre-war Zeniths are notorious for power supply transformers shorting out! The problem only became worse when 6X5s, became more common.
I love them old Zeniths...congradulations on your score!!

[toxcrusadr]

That is incredible.