Short Wave Craft Magazine, July 1935

"His New Love"

Ah, young love! The blonde damsel shown in Short Wave Craft of July, 1935 has an eager look in her eye. So does her companion, but is his loving gaze directed at her, or at the dishy mirrored radio behind her shoulder? If I were him, I'd forget the radio and tend to the business at hand!

This magazine is one of three that depict women competing for the attention of a radio lover. The earliest is Radio News from July 1926, entitled "Alone At Last!" It shows a teary-eyed bride in a hotel room with her new husband and his radio. The other is the March 1935 issue of Short Wave Craft, in which a sleep-deprived wife gives her radio-dazed hubby a piece of her mind.

And Now, What You've All Been Waiting For!

The March '35 Short Wave Craft contained a caption contest, inviting readers to submit titles for the cover. Winning entries were published in this July issue.

Perhaps it was a custom in early radio circles to make awful puns. In any case, the winners include some of the worst groaners I've ever seen. The publisher provided translations in parentheses in cases where the joke was too obscure to fathom.

Here we go!

Hey, don't blame me—I didn't write them! The magazine received an amazing 16,000 entries, including many duplicates. Some of those repeated many times were, When to Listen In, Ohm Sweet Ohm, The Radio Bed-Bug, Scrambled Speech, Uncontrollable Oscillation, Short Waves and Long Raves, The Radio Widow, A Strong Local Cuts In, and Too Much Feedback.

Sigh. Maybe the 1930s just weren't a funny time.

In any case, the first prize winner received a Pilot 11 Super-Dragon receiver, which sounds pretty cool. Second through fifth places hauled in kits. One hundred prizes were awarded in total, although by the time you reached fifteenth place, the prizes were things like a battery or one's choice of any 50-cent book published by the company.