The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I was looking through a 1921 Radio News magazine awhile back and saw this article and pictures and thought you might get a kick out of it. I thought about putting it in the "Period Pictures" thread, but it really doesn't make much sense. I see many pictures of phonograph horns being used like this in those old magazines, but this one probably sums up what what the radio folks were up to. They really seemed to favor the Edison cygnet horns, and that really does make sense. Makes me wonder where the machines went?

Very interesting article and pictures, thank you for posting.
The only way to listen to early radio was to use headphones, just like listening tubes in early phonographs. There was an intense quest and heavy competition in the '20s for good speaker designs and amplifiers to drive them. The first and most obvious solution was to attach a headphone element to a phonograph horn. This worked reasonably well and quickly led to refinements in design. Fortunately for the radio people, the phonograph horn had reached the peak of its design (except for the exponential and re-entrant horns) long before this time. I think the cygnet became the most used design for radio speakers because of its efficiency and space-saving design. The cygnet type radio horns originally used a headphone element in the base, but better and more elaborate drivers were soon developed to make them louder and better sounding. These horns were made of many materials including paper mache, steel, cast iron, wood (Music Master, very similar in appearance to an Edison Opera horn) tortoise shell and others. By about 1925, cone speakers were sufficiently developed to push horns out of the market.
I have also seen early microphones such as the one into which Mme. Hempel is singing. The ones I have seen appear to have been manufactured for the purpose. They are all black and strictly utilitarian without even a little bit of gold striping. They are similar in size and shape to an Edison Triumph or Home horn and have a small red "On The Air" light to cue the performers.

Jim