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September 22, 2019 9:34 am  #1


On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

Hard to believe that prior to 1945...radio's were used for the 2nd World War, once the war ended RCA Victor in Montreal started to produce radio's for consumer...we'd sit by the radio back then and tune into what was going on the world...any one named Lexa, probably didn't even exist...




Here is more on the story of the launch of the big old clunker wooden radio...enjoy the read....


And oh ya, what was your all time favourite radio? (Mine was a clock radio that the numbers were like shutters and they'd roll over...I loved that thing)




https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/history-through-our-eyes/history-through-our-eyes-sept-21-1945-rca-victors-first-postwar-radio

 

Last edited by Muffaraw Joe (September 22, 2019 9:35 am)


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November 26, 2019 8:11 am  #2


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

How did "hockey fans across Canada and in the United States and Newfoundland" catch a Leaf game on Saturday nights prior to 22 September 1945?    Crystal sets?     Sports bars?

 

November 26, 2019 8:42 am  #3


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

It's a good thing these radio devices caught on between 1945 & May of 1957, otherwise Allan Waters & Jerry Grafstein would still have been struggling drug dealers

 

November 26, 2019 9:40 am  #4


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

geo wrote:

It's a good thing these radio devices caught on between 1945 & May of 1957, otherwise Allan Waters & Jerry Grafstein would still have been struggling drug dealers

and surely the world along with John Bolton would not want to be part of whatever drug deal they were cooking up and Ukraine would be announcing investigations on Fareed Zakaria GPS, I say again announcing and not actually conducting.


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November 26, 2019 11:05 am  #5


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

geo wrote:

How did "hockey fans across Canada and in the United States and Newfoundland" catch a Leaf game on Saturday nights prior to 22 September 1945?    Crystal sets?     Sports bars?

Using radios that were made *before* the war. 
 

 

November 26, 2019 2:23 pm  #6


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

grilled.cheese wrote:

THe same day this radio was released, a bunch of curmudgeons got together, complained and reminisced about the good old days. 

LOL!
 

 

November 27, 2019 2:50 am  #7


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

Muffaraw Joe: those radios where the time flipped in shutters were known as flip clocks. I loved them too. They still have a following today. Do a search and you will likely come across a site called flip clock fans. I still have a few that work.

 

November 27, 2019 4:47 pm  #8


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

darcyh wrote:

Muffaraw Joe: those radios where the time flipped in shutters were known as flip clocks. I loved them too. They still have a following today. Do a search and you will likely come across a site called flip clock fans. I still have a few that work.

Had a Panasonic model in my student days.  Love the memories that come back from reading postings on this site.
 

 

November 27, 2019 6:01 pm  #9


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

And we can't forget about Electrohome in Kitchener, Northern Electric, and Canadian General Electric who also produced table top radios in Canada after the war. All of them would later start to produce televisions around 1949/1950 with Electrohome being the most successful. Electrohome was Canada's largest TV manufacturer from 1949 until 1984 and in the 70's exported their colour TV's to 23 different countries. If you travelled to the then Kennedy Space Centre in Florida or Mission Control in Houston in the 1970's, many of the colour TV monitors used by NASA were manufactured by Electrohome. 

 

November 28, 2019 4:32 am  #10


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

paterson1 wrote:

And we can't forget about Electrohome in Kitchener, Northern Electric, and Canadian General Electric who also produced table top radios in Canada after the war. All of them would later start to produce televisions around 1949/1950 with Electrohome being the most successful. Electrohome was Canada's largest TV manufacturer from 1949 until 1984 and in the 70's exported their colour TV's to 23 different countries. If you travelled to the then Kennedy Space Centre in Florida or Mission Control in Houston in the 1970's, many of the colour TV monitors used by NASA were manufactured by Electrohome. 

Thanks for bringing up Electrohome.

That was quite a place; the Electrohome factory on Wellington St. in Kitchener. I got my first ever job as a cleaner there in 1974. They were building colour TV's and some stereo equipment. Electohome made their first foray into high end stereo and quad gear. Anyone remember the brand name "Planar"? 
 

 

November 28, 2019 7:52 am  #11


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

darcyh wrote:

    That was quite a place; the Electrohome factory on Wellington St. in Kitchener 

 . . . down the street from the boyhood home of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.     (posted for the benefit of Grilled.Cheese, a younger radio enthusiast who loves reading nostalgia posts here on SOWNY)
 

 

November 28, 2019 11:44 am  #12


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

darcyh wrote:

paterson1 wrote:

And we can't forget about Electrohome in Kitchener, Northern Electric, and Canadian General Electric who also produced table top radios in Canada after the war. All of them would later start to produce televisions around 1949/1950 with Electrohome being the most successful. Electrohome was Canada's largest TV manufacturer from 1949 until 1984 and in the 70's exported their colour TV's to 23 different countries. If you travelled to the then Kennedy Space Centre in Florida or Mission Control in Houston in the 1970's, many of the colour TV monitors used by NASA were manufactured by Electrohome. 

Thanks for bringing up Electrohome.

That was quite a place; the Electrohome factory on Wellington St. in Kitchener. I got my first ever job as a cleaner there in 1974. They were building colour TV's and some stereo equipment. Electohome made their first foray into high end stereo and quad gear. Anyone remember the brand name "Planar"? 
 

Electrohome at it's peak employed about 1,500 people, had two administrative offices and 10 manufacturing plants in the Kitchener/Waterloo area. They manufactured home electronics, fans, dehumidifiers, organs, records, furniture, and of course later got into high tech large screen projection units and broadcasting. What was left of Electrohome became Christie Digital which is located in the plant where you worked on Wellington St.  And some of the hi tech companies in Waterloo can be traced back to Electrohome as well, so indirectly they still have a fairly big presence in the area.

The plant on Shanley Street which is 121 years old was recently sold for $1.4 million, is going to be torn down and made into (wait for it) a mid sized high rise with retail. The building was falling down and had been empty for decades.
 

 

November 29, 2019 2:53 am  #13


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

I have an old 5 tube clock radio made by Sparton Electric in London Ontario. I guess they have long since gone out of business.

 

November 30, 2019 1:51 am  #14


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

Well darcyh, Sparton closed their London facility around 2010, but it looks like they have a manufacturing facility in Woodbridge.  They had been in London for 80 years and they did manufacture radios, and televisions in London. The popular Sparton Space Command TV was manufactured in London. 

They were a major facility for the pressing of record albums and 45's. Spartons pressing facilities in London handled production for various labels like ABC Dunhill, Reprise, Warner Brothers.  The company was owned by Sparton Corporation in the US. 

They were even in the record business and had their own Sparton record label. Under the Sparton label they released hundreds of albums and 45's.  Released albums from John Coltrane, Tommy Roe, Spencer Davis Group, Della Reese,  Ray Charles and others and they also released quite a bit of product from Canadian groups and artists, mostly jazz and light pop.

Later they got into high tech manufacturing and design for military, medical and industry. Today they are mostly based in the US but do have the one facility in Woodbridge which is 21,000 square feet, and the company also goes by Stealth.com in Woodbridge.  It looks like they do custom design of computers and LED monitors among a few other things for military and medical industries.

              

 

November 30, 2019 4:10 am  #15


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

paterson1: Thanks so much for the info. I did not know know Sparton was in the record business.

A couple of years ago I drove by what I presumed was their factory / plant located on (of course) Sparton St. in London. The site is located within a residential area and the aging facility was about half a city block long, not sure what occupied it, but there was some kind of operation there with several cars in the parking lot etc.

Thanks for the history lesson; you sure know your stuff.
 

Last edited by darcyh (November 30, 2019 4:14 am)

 

November 30, 2019 1:07 pm  #16


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

Well you are most welcome   I just look around the web and find this stuff. Sparton may have had more than one facility in London, so they could have been on Sparton St.  The address I had for them was on Ash Street, but their record facility might have been elsewhere in the Forest City. 

Also forgot that Admiral  used to manufacture appliances, radios and TV's in Toronto. In fact my late father worked at the Admiral plant for a little while around 1961. I heard Zenith manufactured TV's in Canada as well but I haven't found much to support this. Maybe someone else knows.

But the biggest was Electrohome and they manufactured their own televisions until 1984. One of their last TV's was the relatively successful Electrohome Blue Optic TV. I remember TV commercials for the Blue Optic model. In the 80's they were battling the SONY's, Hitachi's, Panasonic's and Toshiba's of the world. Interesting to note however is that Electrohome was the number one selling brand for colour TV's in Canada for much of the 1970's.

RCA and Zenith, who were the biggest TV manufacturers in the US stopped making their own televisions around 1986.

Last edited by paterson1 (November 30, 2019 1:09 pm)

 

November 30, 2019 6:38 pm  #17


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!


 

November 30, 2019 9:34 pm  #18


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

Interesting little video. Electrohome wound down the business in 2008, The Electrohome  name, logos and some products that are still marketed are from Bluetronics/Circus World Displays out of Niagara Falls ON. They specialize in retro Electrohome radios and record players. There was a low end line of Electrohome TV's a few years back, but I don't know if they still exist.

Didn't mention anything about another Canadian company, Clairtone who were a high end sound company from the late 50's to the early 70's. They produced a more expensive line of stereo equipment and colour TV's. They actually had ads featuring Frank Sinatra in the 60's. Something to the effect that "Sinatra listens to Sinatra on a Clairtone". Their advertising would emphasis the Clairtone sound, and they were the first to introduce a modular stereo design in 1964. Up until then stereos were more like a piece of furniture in heavy wooden cabinets. And of course modular stereos are still the design of choice today.

 

November 30, 2019 11:09 pm  #19


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

I remember the name Spartan Records. Saw it on the CHUM CHART.

Went through my records and found at least one. An album by the Standells perhaps best remembered for their hit Dirty Water and also their appearance on the Munsters where Herman proclaimed somethings to the effect that America is in fine shape in the hands of such outstanding lads as the Standells. Some info about the company on the scans below:

Last edited by Fitz (November 30, 2019 11:14 pm)


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November 30, 2019 11:30 pm  #20


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

I believe my sister had a 45 copy of Brian Hyland's "Sealed With A Kiss" on the Sparton label.

 

November 30, 2019 11:41 pm  #21


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

I went through some 45's too until I remembered the Standells album, there was a Brian Hyland single,  The Joker Went Wild, but I think it was an American pressing and not on Sparton.


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December 1, 2019 2:44 pm  #22


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

You can check out pretty much everything that Sparton or any other label released by googling
Discogs. This site is really interesting and you can see almost everything that the Sparton label either pressed or released on their own. When you get to Discogs just type in Sparton Records in the search box at the top. You can spend a lot of time at this site if you are into music, artists or interested in various record companies.

 

December 1, 2019 6:28 pm  #23


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

paterson1 wrote:

You can check out pretty much everything that Sparton or any other label released by googling
Discogs. This site is really interesting and you can see almost everything that the Sparton label either pressed or released on their own. When you get to Discogs just type in Sparton Records in the search box at the top. You can spend a lot of time at this site if you are into music, artists or interested in various record companies.

I actually did that earlier before I saw your post as it's easier than going through my records but there's a lot of pages that came up and I may go back. I often end up on Discogs when I am looking for information on records or pricing.
 


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December 1, 2019 7:38 pm  #24


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

Very interesting discussion of Sparton. The CHUM Chart Book lists five Hyland singles from 1962-63 as having been issued by them (including Sealed With A Kiss). However, The Joker Went Wild is shown as having been issued by Philips. 

 

December 2, 2019 1:25 am  #25


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

Just had a look at my Whitburn, and the songs released on Sparton here are shown as being on ABC-Paramount in the US ... Joker is shown as being on Philips in both books.

 

December 2, 2019 9:24 am  #26


Re: On this day in 1945 RCA Victor in Montreal made a radio for home use!

Lorne wrote:

Just had a look at my Whitburn, and the songs released on Sparton here are shown as being on ABC-Paramount in the US ... Joker is shown as being on Philips in both books.

Loved looking through those Whitburn books and pre -internet they were somewhat of a bible just this one page is an example. You see that future Three Dog Night member Danny Hutton had a top 100 hit in 1966 and that The Ides of March had two top 100 hits before Vehicle. They were a garage rock band in the Chicago area before their big hit:Also their lead singer Jim Peterik went on to be the lead singer of Survivor and I just thought of a bonus trivia question both Danny and Jim worked with Brian Wilson.


 

Last edited by Fitz (December 2, 2019 9:46 am)


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