Lissen: radios, kits for radios, batteries and
components
This
page is by way of a comment on a Lissen advertising leaflet, circa 1934.
As usual with such material, no date is actually given for the sets
depicted and, in fact, they cover more than one year of production. One
interesting point is provided by the details of the 'Skyscraper 4'
battery kit. The estimable Jonathan Hill, in 'Radio! Radio!' shows the
kit and states that no loudspeaker or cabinet was provided - just a kit
of chassis components packaged in cardboard. The Lissen leaflet says
differently, offering the kit as kit of parts: or kit of parts plus
cabinet: or kit of parts plus cabinet and PM loudspeaker. It would seem
that the leaflet post-dates the original kit by at least a year, in
which time Lissen added the 'extras'.
The
leaflet offers a choice of four different kits, three of which were
battery operated and one AC mains powered. There is only one superhet
kit and that must have been quite something in it's time as it is
battery powered but uses no less than seven valves. HT batteries must
have been used up pretty fast, and accumulators recharged often. At the
time of writing, I have not been able to locate a schematic diagram but my guess is
that no multi-valves would have been employed, for example, Lissen may
have used a separate diode valve for detection and possibly a separate
oscillator valve. The kit
was offered complete for £11.10s. (£11.50) which was a great deal of
money in those days, hence the offer of 'convenient gradual payment
terms'.
By 1934, Lissen Ltd. of
Edmonton, London and Isleworth, Middlesex, had become a popular
name both for the production of factory-built sets and for their range
of kits for home construction. The company had been bought in 1928 by
the Ever-Ready battery company, in fact, but retained its founder T.N.
Cole as managing director. Cole later left and set up the Vidor battery
company, in direct and damaging competition with Lissen/Ever-Ready. In fact, home construction was
for a time at least quite a
big hobby activity and although it is probably the case that any savings
made by such home building were more apparent than real, the fact is
that thousands of enthusiastic amateurs built these Lissen kits - and
kits by other makers, such as Cossor - on their kitchen tables. Others
avidly read the radio magazines of the day, preferring to learn at the
same time as construct, from articles in Wireless World, Practical
Wireless, Amateur Wireless and others and thereby becoming true
enthusiasts to whom building a kit would be seen as cheating!

By the time this
leaflet was published, kit sets were gradually falling from favour with
potential purchasers, one contributory reason being, perhaps, that the
savings to be made over a ready-built commercial radio were in reality modest in
the extreme.
|