POPULAR WIRELESS

This magazine had its beginnings in the 1920s, well before Practical Wireless. It majored on the designs of John Scott Taggart and boasted a stellar group of names on its header, as can be seen above - names such as Sir Oliver Lodge and P.P. Eckersley (of BBC fame). A weekly publication, it rode the gathering wave of radio as a hobby until in the later 1930s it lost out to the increasingly successful formula that FJ Camm had created in his Practical Wireless.

There are still some who swear by the designs of Taggart - and others who consider his work idiosyncratic, odd and archaic. I will decline to comment.

RADIO CONSTRUCTOR

A post-war production, Radio Constructor was a rival to Practical Wireless and like all magazines it had its devotees.

The magazine ceased publication in 1981, probably because of the falling-off of interest in radio as a hobby rather than any fault of its editor or publishers.

AMATEUR WIRELESS was another early starter in the radio magazine sector. It ran until a take-over by Practical Wireless in the 1930s. Interestingly it featured a column by 'Thermion', with the title 'On Your Wavelength' - the selfsame one as FJ Camm used in the Practical Wireless of the 1930s onward. We must therefore assume that the Thermion of Amateur Wireless is the same one as that of Practical Wireless.