This is a technology channel. Please, no more comments about politics and ideologies.

@spacejihadist4246

4 ай бұрын

Haha

@LeftyMaker

4 ай бұрын

@@proto57 don't come back, if possible

@aliday9968

4 ай бұрын

Hello, @LeftyMaker. You said you grew up in Bulgaria, so can you please answer me. I’m starting to learn Bulgarian, and there two funny keyboards layout: уеишщк and явертъ. Which one is people usually use? Which one you can buy in every computer store? My phone break my mind )

@LeftyMaker

4 ай бұрын

The 1st layout is known as BDS (Bulgarian National Standard) and is the only variant you'll find printed on the keys of a computer keyboard. However, the vast majority of people use the second layout you mentioned. It's called "phonetic" and lays out letters based on the way they sound. So on a PC keyboard, Г is where G is, Д is on the D key and so on. This layout makes it much easier to learn to type in Bulgarian if you're already used to the QWERTY layout. Also, many people during the 90's and 00's (myself included) used to type in Bulgarian using the English letters since computers often had troubles displaying Cyrilic characters properly. So if you wanted to type "здравей", you'd type "zdravej" or something like that. If you do this today, you'll get laughed at :) Both layouts are available in phones and PCs. Good luck!

@aliday9968

4 ай бұрын

@@LeftyMaker thank you! So in need to choice standard variant to be able to use office keyboards

In Soviet Russia, you don't change the station, the station changes you!

@bigdaddydons6241

5 ай бұрын

These jokes stopped being funny 15 years ago

@deezeemb

5 ай бұрын

@@bigdaddydons6241 I know, but this was one of the rare cases where it actually made sense.

@jinksomiabodyart3189

5 ай бұрын

It is still funny and menacing... and more poignant in the "developed" world.

@MagicManICT

5 ай бұрын

@@bigdaddydons6241These jokes were funny in the 80s, and they're still funny. They remind us of what a totalitarian regime looks like, and if you can't get the message from comedy, you better get it from somewhere. Why so serious?

@aristo80

5 ай бұрын

​@@MagicManICT Totalitäre Regime wie das US-Regime.

Looks like 100V audio distribution system. Often used in stores and shopping centers. High voltage signal that didn't suffer from interference or resistance over long distances. Transformed down to desired volume using the switch to choose how many watts you'd like to draw from the line

@KuntalGhosh

5 ай бұрын

Yup i have a pa amplifier that has a 100v output at back. Does only 50w but more than enough for background music in my restaurant 😂

@williamwong5627

5 ай бұрын

When I was a kid, I found a big loudspeaker and connected the terminals to junction box of a cable broadcast station. A very loud sound and the speaker was fried. Later, I found out the cause when I learn electronics.

@yaroslavpanych2067

5 ай бұрын

That is not transforming down. That is usually 1:1 winded transforming. That is simply protection devices, preventing speaker blowing up due to overload.

@dsracoon

5 ай бұрын

100V high impedance, the transformer then impedance matched the speaker (which is usually 8ohms or something)

@mikehart2555

5 ай бұрын

Also used in hospital radio distribution systems, before the inductive loop.

Actually one of the main purposes of these things were to inform people of emergencies. Electric outlet designed for these things had an independent current, so in case of an emergency even if house was left without electricity people still had a way to know what's happening and listen to the instructions, on how to act. My grandad never turned it off, just kept it on lowest volume at all times.

@AquariumRandomVideo2

4 ай бұрын

Yeah, I remember occasional drill sessions with the emergency sirens sounds and what they mean.

@drujbanu

4 ай бұрын

@@AquariumRandomVideo2creepyyy

@sparky6086

4 ай бұрын

There were similar Emergency Broadcast System devices back in the 1950's & '60's in the US, which got their signal from the AC outlet. It was for people or places that didn't have a convenient TV or radio to receive emergency broadcasts. They were specific to emergency broadcasts so didn't feature routine news or entertainment. They weren't prolific, noticiable, or otherwise significant enough to be in common memory, but turn up sometimes on Ebay or in museums as Cold War Civil Defense relics.

@jimbotron70

4 ай бұрын

I believe it was its intended use, maybe in case of nuclear war, btw radio over airwaves was well developed in Eastern Europe

@MattH-wg7ou

4 ай бұрын

I never thought about using the AC power distribution system as a way to transmit "data" or signals like that. Hmm. Ive got some reading to do.

We had this system in the UK when I was a lad in the 1950s. It was called Radio Relay and was provided by the Rediffusion company. Two "programmes" both BBC - the light programme (music & light entertainment) and the Home Service (mostly talks, news, features. However there was a lot of overlap. Commercial radio didn't come in until the 1970s. The large speaker was housed in a sturdy polished wooden cabinet with a volume control. The socket on the wall had a selector switch. Reception was excellent and free of interference and fading - no fiddly "tuning" required. Radio sets were very expensive in that pre-transistor era but Radio Relay was affordable - only a few shillings a week. I had a socket in my bedroom and when I was ill in bed my mother would light a coal fire and bring the speaker upstairs to entertain me!

@Don.Challenger

4 ай бұрын

Ah, Mothers, hopefully they never go obsolete like those coal bins did.

@SlickArmor

4 ай бұрын

​@@Don.Challengermoms are in such high demand that men are volunteering to become moms. What a glorious time to be alive. 😅

@karlkarlson3502

4 ай бұрын

🤣

@JCAtkeson3

4 ай бұрын

​@@Don.Challenger Not until I invent the AI MomTron (TM).

@Bankable2790

4 ай бұрын

That’s an unbelievably cool anecdote my friend. Thank you for sharing! Such an interesting time of transition between technologies

They still had these in Belarus, at least in the early 2000s. They still provided state “radio”.

@exploreworldbirds

5 ай бұрын

Wow Belarus is still back in the stone age. I worked in electronics in early 1970s, radios were cheap & widespread.

@sangoforto3589

5 ай бұрын

wdym, we had fully switched to fiber 2 years before Russia or so, our internet is one of the cheapest in the world. And i think this "wire radio" stopped working somewhere near 2018 and my granny bought normal one

@OmarLivesUnderSpace

5 ай бұрын

Ужс

@Hugh_Morjoui

5 ай бұрын

Эта шняга прекратила вещание в октябре 2016 года, во всяком случае в Минске. Всё равно по нему вещалась только уродская пропаганда и ничего интересного

@andersandersen6295

4 ай бұрын

But radios could recieve western signals, that is where these came in handy.@@exploreworldbirds

My grandma had one of those. She was calling it “tochkata” or “the spot”. It was always on playing some folk music or saying the news. Seeing it brings so many memories. And yes, it had a doily (or “karentse”) on it.

@WTFBOOMDOOM

4 ай бұрын

Short for "radio point" (radiotochka), though they aren't really radios 😅

@KolasName

4 ай бұрын

@@WTFBOOMDOOM There is a radio receiver actually (one for a house or an entrance group) which provides signal for this points and it's displayed in this video

There were similar Emergency Broadcast System devices back in the 1950's & '60's in the US, which got their signal from the AC outlet. It was for people or places that didn't have a convenient TV or radio to receive emergency broadcasts. They were specific to emergency broadcasts so didn't feature routine news or entertainment. They weren't prolific, noticiable, or otherwise significant enough to be in common memory, but turn up sometimes on Ebay or in museums as Cold War Civil Defense relics.

@centralillinoisrailpix453

4 ай бұрын

NEAR receiver, triggered by a power line and used telephone line to get the information. NEAR was an acronym for National Emergency Alarm Repeater

@odietamo9376

4 ай бұрын

WHA-A-A-A-T? I am American, I am old enough to remember, and I never heard of these things! The nearest thing I can recall was that certain radio frequencies-typically the most powerful radio stations in an area-were designated as the Civil Defense ones you should tune to in the event of a national emergency. Or maybe they weren’t even existing stations, but a frequency that would be activated in an emergency, which usually implied a nuclear attack. Memory about it all getting slightly fuzzy. I even seem to remember that radio dials for a number of years had a symbol at one or two places on the dial that indicated where you should turn to if the bombs were on the way. My god, what a memory to dredge up.

@centralillinoisrailpix453

4 ай бұрын

@@odietamo9376 Those were Conelrad stations, I think 640 and 1240. All other stations, in the event of an emergency, were to go off the air and those two alone would broadcast information, so enemy bombers could not use our broadcast signals for direction finding, and to ensure consistent information. Near systems were different, worked off the telephone and power lines.

@sparky6086

4 ай бұрын

@odietamo9376 Like I wrote in my comment, "They weren't prolific, noticiable, or otherwise significant enough to be in common memory". In other words, most people including you, probably never saw or heard of them, so you wouldn't remember them.

@odietamo9376

4 ай бұрын

@@sparky6086 I believe you, it’s just that I’m astonished that that technology was here at all and I never heard of it before. It really must’ve been used quite minimally, or only in certain cities or states I never went to or knew anything about. Even as a kid, I loved everything about radio. My father helped me to build a crystal set, etcetera. And yet this entirely different technology I never heard of until now.

What you mean, "some people"? We all used to have those in the USSR. I remember listening to one at my grandma's flat in the morning (every morning). My parents just used to unplug the thing.

@DanielGaviriaAcosta

5 ай бұрын

Well he is not talking about USSR he clearly mentioned he was a kid in Bulgaria.

@animae008

5 ай бұрын

​@@DanielGaviriaAcostaBulgaria was a part of Warsaw Pact. Countries in it were satellite states of USSR and ofc we had a lot of russian tech

@sofiagamez7007

5 ай бұрын

​@@DanielGaviriaAcostaBulgaria was part of the CCCP.

@ryanreedgibson

5 ай бұрын

You must be the "some people" he was talking about. As in, "some people" are really annoying.

@Mayflower-Yev

5 ай бұрын

@@sofiagamez7007 Not really. Sure, they were under the HEAVY influence of the CCCR but they still had a different government to the one in Moscow. Just like Poland and East Germany were.

Kim Jong Un: you will have one channel and it will be your favorite.

@darioburatovich2240

4 ай бұрын

You too have one chanel. ..Radio Israel World Wide Broadcast. Let's call a spade, a bloody spade....🤣🇦🇷

@dewayneweaver2744

4 ай бұрын

Kim Jong Un, wishes he had a system that advanced, they are still putting midgets inside wooden boxes 😅

@Richcraftttttt

4 ай бұрын

​@darioburatovich2240 That's Argentinian flag

@lidmc796

4 ай бұрын

Beat me to it by 7 days

@Bitterstone3849

4 ай бұрын

FKJ. 💣

I have no idea where, but I remember hearing a story of someone staying in a hotel room in the former Eastern block. He wanted to move the radio so turned it off unplugged it, and moved it over. He plugged it in, turned it on, and all of a sudden there was a loud bang, a flash and he was covered in soot, turned out it was one of these and it really disagreed with being plugged into the mains 😅

@deltab9768

4 ай бұрын

My first thought seeing the plug and transformer (before he explained it) was that this was meant to be plugged into the mains to create background noise. Kinda like a “white noise generator” except with a 50 or 60Hz tone instead of white noise.

@EarlHayward

4 ай бұрын

I thought your were going to say the loud bang and smoke came from the police breaking down the door as they were upset someone moved their listening device!

@agungpriambodo1674

Ай бұрын

Hahahah Stupid similar plugs can be forced into the mains Obviously they should have used different audio plug

Hooray! This is our favorite Радиоточка - Radiospot! 😊😊😊 Толкова се зарадвах когато чух, че си от България! Успех с канала! 😊😊😊

If your tube TV's speaker ever broke, you could take the speaker in that thing, wire it in place of your TV speaker and it would work even better than the original speaker... Also, if you kept all the internals and wired it to a jack you just made a pc speaker... I did both of those things...

@carnedulce

4 ай бұрын

That's awesome!

@theloudspeakernerd-tlsn9322

4 ай бұрын

What do you mean "even better"?

@user-qu2pn1lh1g

4 ай бұрын

And then turn the case into a bowl for cabbage soup

@uncletiggermclaren7592

4 ай бұрын

@@theloudspeakernerd-tlsn9322It was a better speaker than the one that came with the TV. Don't you speak English, mate?.

@theloudspeakernerd-tlsn9322

4 ай бұрын

@@uncletiggermclaren7592 tv speakers in that time were usually better than those speakers.

In Singapore and the UK, we had Rediffusion. Worked similarly to this.

@dennis8196

5 ай бұрын

Redefusion was the first cable TV network in HK, all analogue TV (and some audio only stations) sent down massive cables. AFAIK it was a UK company and most if their work was overseas in the colonies.

@ianfarrugia4495

5 ай бұрын

In Malta, also had rediffusion

@Yadobler

4 ай бұрын

Damn this is ancient. I think many old HDB flats still have the old "FM TV" analogue aerial outlet in the living room. In the late 2000 usually you'd retrofit the analogue cable tv wire through the conduit that used to hold the radio cable

@cva9928

4 ай бұрын

@@Yadobler Don't know about that, but when my dad ordered one, we had a dangling wire drilled into our home from an exchange outside our street that was hardwired into the speaker in our living room.

the last time I seen things like these were up to mid 2000s in local open marketplaces, they broadcast music the whole place and also had a "DJ" who would announce something at random or give you weather updates or news every hour or so, you could also walk up to the station and ask to pass a message, for example if you lost someone in the market you could report where are you waiting for said person, at which store or boot or whatever things like that

@rodolfoerdogan4983

4 ай бұрын

What country?

@sandasturner9529

24 күн бұрын

Nice.

In America, that is called a Musak system. It works because the audio signal is an AC current that can travel long distances. You can build your own just by running speaker wire long distances to everywhere from a main amplifier. The volume control is just a rheostat resister, and the transformer boosts the voltage to drive the speaker to be louder.

Back in Northen England in the late 1940s, we lived in streets without electricity. Cooking and lighting were gas-powered. We had radios. The system was called Rediffusion and worked rather like this. Hard wired with 2 knobs - volume control and station swith. We weren't limited by the 3 switch positions - there WERE only 3 radio stations. Cost just pennies a week. Years later, in my own rented council home with electricity but no TV signal, I encountered Rediffusion again - they were the only way to watch TV. And by then, cost more than the service was worth. Most of us had the pre-existing TVs removed, and simply did without. But Rediffusion had succeeded in getting the local council to include the subscription in our rent - and as the cables were still in our homes we'd still have to pay. It took legal action to stop that, and police later investigated both the firm and the council officials who'd organised that nice little earner.

@gearbear4530

5 ай бұрын

thank you for that bit of history!!!

@gearbear4530

5 ай бұрын

You grew up w/o a “proper” radio and now you are connected to the world through a mini handheld computer, have you contemplated how much humanity has advanced in just a few long decades?

@xavierhuc2125

5 ай бұрын

UK Licensing, a history of crime

@jaakkolehto1487

5 ай бұрын

My grandfather Erkki (RIP) was growing up while his father was fighting in WW2. When Erkki was told dad’s coming home from the war, and bringing a radio, Erkki asked What is a radio and what is a dad? Well Erkki did work later as a physics teacher, math teacher, computer science teacher and was a philosopher. And of course he was an electronics enthusiast and did restore radios. Guess why I repair and restore old radios ? Greetings from Finland🇫🇮

@tbpjmr2869

5 ай бұрын

@@gearbear4530SOLID GOLD, Sir.

Early cable systems in the UK worked the same way. In the mountainous northern regions of England an entrepreneurial person built a tall radio mast to connect a good clear signal from the BBC and then ran wires into his neighbours homes. Eventually the system was complicated enough that anyone could get the radio via wire cable and even switch stations

@TryDiy

5 ай бұрын

Rediffusion?

@leovillant768

4 ай бұрын

Coolsxitch

@salpicconperfectelglorimel3142

4 ай бұрын

Very interesting and an absolute must at those times. It seems like several receivers are connected to a big antenna. Each receiver then selects the range of electromagnetic frequencies they want, in which their program is emitted (the same they would do from the EM waves from their own antenna, but the individual antennas in the homes can't be as tall and/or wide).

@filanfyretracker

4 ай бұрын

that is how all cable started. That is also why you sometimes see in the USA at least cable sometimes called "CATV" which is shorthand for what cable was in its origin years "Community Antenna Television".

@plateshutoverlock

4 ай бұрын

Basically tall shared antenna, signal amplifier for the cable run, and cable instead of small antenna plugged into the radio set. Like cable service coax plugged into a TV set instead of "rabbit ears".

Looks almost identical to the *NuTone* intercom system in my house that was built in 1979. One built into the walls in every room in the house. one at the front, one at the back door, part of the doorbells. The main station (control center) was in the kitchen. 😉

@cattenchaostherandomperson

4 ай бұрын

looks like we have similar systems, except ours is newer (at least part of it)

@judithsixkiller5586

4 ай бұрын

We moved into a rental house that had one,back in the early 70's. It was awesome! You could instantly talk to anyone in any room of the house,or listen to clear radio music right from the wall speaker unit without having to drag a radio around or tune it. No searching for a plug in or clutter.

I never saw or heard of these things here in the USA. In my 70 years of living, this is the first time I ever heard of these things. My parents had an AM radio that was tunable to multiple stations. It probably was made in 1960.

@davidb2206

4 ай бұрын

In the U.S. there were a few -- probably rare -- jukebox systems in large restaurants in the 1950's that used this same principle to spread the music around the room.

This is when I learned that not everything that looks like a power socket plug should be inserted into a power socket.

@ersatzvitamin1

4 ай бұрын

Did any fire or electrocution happen?

@vladvovk7318

4 ай бұрын

@ersatzvitamin1 no, just loud scary sound, I took it off quite fast. Maybe I was super lucky.

@exceptionalanimations1508

4 ай бұрын

​@@vladvovk7318 I can assume you had it on low volume by chance so when over double it's max rated voltage came through it, there wasn't enough reaching the speaker to detonate it

@matthewpettengale9943

4 ай бұрын

Did they have the same plug as a 220V appliance?

@vladvovk7318

4 ай бұрын

@@matthewpettengale9943 yep, absolutely the same

We had something very similar in the Netherlands, 4 channels. "draadomroep" (wired broadcast) or 'radiodistributie'. It existed between 1924 and 1975, and was a precursor to cable radio/TV. It was considered a legacy system from about 1964. Every channel needed a separate wire, this was the main limitation. Another was that it was relatively low-fi. A similar local system for "church radio" persists to this day in some locations.

@mfbfreak

4 ай бұрын

The low fi part is incorrect. In fact, the systems allowed a much greater audio bandwidth than the then-common AM radio broadcast stations. Back in the day, the typical audio bandwidth would've been 4,5kHz because of the crowding of the AM broadcast bands. The Draadomroep could get to double that, and the Goodmans speakers used in the 50s-60s beige boxes are extremely high quality. I have two of those, with the Goodmans speaker in them. They have the built in tube amplifier (normally used for big classrooms and such). I use them connected to bluetooth as speakers for my laptop. They're on par with those used in the most high end Philips radios from the day - but much more affordable to the average Joe. Only when FM broadcasting started to get popular, was the Draadomroep surpassed quality wise.

@ConnieIsMijnNaam

3 ай бұрын

I am so happy to see another Dutch person who remembers this. We called it distributie-radio. I remember it in our house in the late 60’s. But whenever I talk about it, people look at me funny. It seems like I am the only one who remembers this.

Wow, a George Orwell's1984 reference. i'm digging it. A nice piece of history you have there.

@shoora813

3 ай бұрын

England also had this wired audio broadcast system. So, “this is totally different story - one must understand”🤡

@stanvol

3 ай бұрын

I'm reading it right now and so far it has been excellent

@shoora813

3 ай бұрын

@@stanvolQuite frankly, this reading is for clinical imbeciles. Orwell's fantasies about english socialism is far-far away from present nightmare - The "brave new world" of Huxley come true in the west

@stanvol

3 ай бұрын

@@shoora813 although his writing style is quite pedantic, I think 1984 has a few valuable points. You also must remember at which point in history it was written in. The roots of the cold war were beginning to form, and communism was a word that was feared by some. I think that your view is slightly close-minded (although a valid one). Literature is an abstract thing, and 1984 is a book that can be interpreted in many ways. Although I do not agree with a many of the things in the book itself (for example, the unjustified insulting of woman, which was obviously a projection of Orwell's views on them) I believe that the book can be used as a way to reflect on our current societal structure. Still, I respect your opinion on the matter, have a nice day!

Very interesting. The kind of information that is real local history but is normally considered unimportant to be broadly known. Thank you very much for sharing this. Greetings from Brazil.

In the 50/60, Singapore had a similar speaker box, except that it had selectable 2 channels. Radio was expensive, so most homes had this cable broadcast paying a monthly fee of $3. Broadcast began at 6 am and stopped at midnight daily. Unfortunately, it quietly died when radios became affordable.

@jC-kc4si

5 ай бұрын

Did anyone have shortwave radios?

@lawrencejelsma8118

4 ай бұрын

​@@jC-kc4si... I have (still works today with some bad capacitor static) those 1950s AM radio only. I loved in the 1970s the transistor radio including FM in mono and in stereo in the 1980s. Nostalgia times when playing with radio stations were fun until the 1980s cassette players 1990s during CD players changed our next forty years in technologies.

@williamwong5627

2 ай бұрын

Yes, only the rich could afford a radio with piano buttons selection of MW, SW1, SW2 etc and also LW. My neighbor used to listen to an Australian station playing Cliff Richard's songs with inconsistent reception. We did not have FM broadcasts during that time. Only MW. Later, I had a transistor tiny radio.

Those smooth orwell 1984 refrence

@TrueSeed-ft1jn

5 ай бұрын

1984 has always been that thing that people recognize as being "too accurate" a description of reality - but we are no closer now than when it was written, to being able to do anything about it.

@BeaverChainsaw

5 ай бұрын

I love orwell’s writing but people act as if 1984 “predicted” the future. As if a two way radio wiretapped by the government you couldn’t turn off was the craziest sci fi thing ever. Hell the Soviet Union and nazi germany existed when Orwell wrote his vision for totalitarianism. I think brave new world was a more interesting futuristic dystopia.

@xaviert.123

5 ай бұрын

I don't understand why the comparison was made when the countries this radio was in were nothing like Oceania in 1984.

@TheDarkPacific

4 ай бұрын

​ @xaviert.123 what does oceania have to with anything? 1984 is a reference to a book. Maybe im missing something lol (Ignore this idiot🤦‍♂️)

@I-should-have-let-Trotsky-stay

4 ай бұрын

​@@TheDarkPacific😂🤦

I had no idea this existed. Learn something new (or old) everyday.

My grandparents built their house here in alaska in the 70s and it has those everywhere! Most of them actually do 2 way communication too it’s honestly really cool

In Hungary they were called “vezetékes rádió” (wire radio). These speakers were rented, and they were hooked up to basically the same thing you mentioned, in a post office.

@thpeti

4 ай бұрын

It's still available for sale. 100V "public address" audio system. Mostly used in hotels, restaurants, shops, train stations, airports or in schools for announcements and for background music service. In recent installations, the 100V amplifier is connected to a computer, mp3 player and a microphone can be turned on for announcements. In bigger spaces,.mostly fully automated systems are used where some relays can select where to announce the information (e.g. shopping malls, airports, stations). These systems will be slowly replaced by PoE speakers which are fully addressable through an IP network.

Back in the '70s and '80s we had radio shack devices that you would plug into the outlet. They were basically intercoms and they sent the voice signal over the electrical system and even when through the backyard into the cottage where my grandmother lived. Probably one of the most useful items that we ever bought.

@Off-Grid-World

4 ай бұрын

These intercoms throughout the whole house, including door bell intercoms are in almost all houses in Florida to this day. I'm 41 almost and first saw these at 8 years old. There was a master system in the hall close to master bedroom.

Yep, we had these in Czechoslovakia as well, you usually had an outlet for these installed in private apartments as well. I think it still worked at some places in the early 90s, but I never quite understood the concept. After all MW radio could be received literally everywhere, probably even in the mountains too.

As a young adult I went back to school into a two-year electronics program at a community college. After graduation, before I took an opportunity to join a design team elsewhere, I worked briefly for a supplier of "canned" music for grocery stores, elevators etc. This was in the late 1980's. I was amazed to realize that a dedicated twisted pair cable left the building on its way to each of their customers. An end-to-end dedicated analog hard line per client! Behind a large bank of windows facing the street, a row of rack-mount reel-to-reel analog tape machines dragged tape almost imperceptibly over their heads. (Not one per customer though, one per annoying genre.) I sometimes wonder how long they continued to use that system. I also regret that I didn't have a phone in my pocket back then. The bundle of cable squirting out the side of the building looked insane.

im gonna plug that into my wall and hear the electricity

@hasanm843

5 ай бұрын

😂 i did

@don2deliver

4 ай бұрын

It hertz to hear propaganda news.

The " Общината" gov started asking yearly taxes for the radio and we at home stop paying it. It was cool. It used to play the radio station " Horizont" and have local news and announcements from time to time. Modern day interned channels killed the vibe of such radio receivers.

@wurstbrat.

2 ай бұрын

Darn interned

At first, I thought it was part of an intercom system. That speaker looks incredibly well made!

We had something pretty similar in italy as well , the filodiffusione "wire broadcasting" , six dedicated radio stations *but* it was broadcasted over the telephone landline. Got shut off in the early 2000s due to DSL internet connections.

@mfbfreak

4 ай бұрын

That system was really interesting. It's actually 'real' radio for which you needed a complete radio receiver, just with buttons to tune instead of a dial. I've owned one or two vintage radios that had the 'Radiodiffusion' on the higher end of the long wave scale, meaning you could connect the radio to the phone line instead of to the antenna, and hear those stations. But you'd have to manually tune in.

You forgot that the signal originally came ‘from the wall’. You had to plug the radio in the socket. In 1980s the radio spots had three radio stations built in.

I’d had one in my apt in Kyiv up to early 2010s )

@don2deliver

4 ай бұрын

But I thought Ukraine was a modern democracy?😂

Switzerland had the "Telefonrundspruch". In the first iteration, the phone line carried audio while the receiver of the landline phone was on hook. In the second incarnation they modulated 6 channels on higher frequencies on the telephone wire. Radios for this system had 6 push buttons to select the program. It was terminated with the upcoming of DSL as that needed the same frequencies.

The same thing existed in the UK, a service from the Rediffusion company. Their service lines were on the same poles as the telephone cables. They had four stations selected by a rotary switch, usually BBC Radio 1,2, 3 and 4. I seem to recall one of the channels switched to Radio Luxemburg at night. My grandmother had one until the early 1970s, when the service closed down because radios were now so cheap. The speaker units often had beautiful wooden cabinets and you would find them thrown out with the trash. I collected a lot of speakers and audio transformers from these, when I was a kid and just getting interested in electronics.

I love old tech from poorer former Soviet satellite states. They way they figured out away past an issue is always interesting. And the tech always looks great

@arbendit4348

5 ай бұрын

Bulgaria was one of the richer Eastern Block countries actually.

@LargeCoke_Mediumfry

5 ай бұрын

@@arbendit4348 well, ok. Than take out the poorer part of that then.

@owlstead

4 ай бұрын

If you think this thing looks great then I've got some old tech to sell to you. Beige or grey boxes enough. The yellow look is just the cheap ABS plastic being hit by ultra violet light, it must have been white or light-grey, see the picture in the magazine. You can clean it up using ultra-bright.

@kyle8952

4 ай бұрын

This technology was also widespread in the UK, holland, many other western countries.

A similar radio was hanging in our 3 room appartment when we got it (by the way free, after waiting in queque for years) from government in Baku, then soviet Azerbaijan, in 1986. Perestroyka already began, so we never listened to it, so it was quickly scrapped.

I learned quite a bit reading the comments. Its great to learn about old tech.

Hello neighbor! I remember those times too. In Romania they used to look a little different, but they used the same concept. Great video about it!

The Netherlands use to have these too before affordable radio's. They should work just as good especially if it's just meant for listening to the news.

@mfbfreak

4 ай бұрын

The dutch system was very quality focused, and if you wanted the absolute best quality in the pre-FM era, you'd get Draadomroep. Double the audio bandwidth of the AM radio of the day, with the German and British programmes picked up near the border for the best signal quality of foreign stations (but those were limited to AM audio bandwidth). You could get then-high end quality, but much more affordably.

As I understand it, that kind of technology was widely used using the pre-existing electrical power grids and transmitting at high frequencies -just like normal radio and all you needed was a frequency splitter: 50 Hz to the power, the high frequencies to the radio. This also works with phone lines and is used to this very day - DSL, ADSL, SDSL … they simply use many (30+) carrier frequencies above what the POTS (plain old telephone system/service, used since 1876 in the USA, yes, pre-WW1) used - or what ISDN uses, respectively … and cram each carrier with as many bits per signal change as possible while still having some reliability.

I met one of the best engineers from Bulgaria, still working in the State building North West in Detroit, and you’ll find some amazing frequencies

As a Bulgarian. These were installed all over my school in every classroom functioning as a bell or announcement speaker.

I recall something very similar from my mom's stories (Romania). She told me that in her grandparents' village, everyone had one in their home. The broadcasting station was called "Villages Antenna," and beside the communist propaganda, it was streaming folk music exclusively. But it was used almost 100% in the rural areas. People in larger towns used specially AM modulators installed in their radios to receive Radio Free Europe and other Western channels.

Imagine everyone in your workplace, your town, your country, hearing the same music and the same speeches, and the same shows at the same time.

@uncletiggermclaren7592

4 ай бұрын

I don't have to Imagine that. We had State Radio, and only one TV channel in New Zealand up until I was 9 years old.

@ambiguousdrink4067

4 ай бұрын

I mean, if you turn radios or tellies to the same station you could still get something similar.

@cerebrummaximus3762

4 ай бұрын

You kind of get that with national emissions, such as live news, elections of presidential/monarch speeches on Christmas and New Year

@uncletiggermclaren7592

4 ай бұрын

@@cerebrummaximus3762 . . . well, not REALLY like this, because we can hear those things on the medium we choose, and from a reporter/organisation that doesn't act as the State's mouthpiece. Or if we choose, we can CHANGE THE CHANNEL AND NOT LISTEN. Which they could not.

@annasolovyeva1013

4 ай бұрын

​@@uncletiggermclaren7592 they could - switch it off

I'm from the Netherlands. My father once told me they had the same system in the 1950's. It was a radio distribution system because a lot of people could not afford a radio. Everyone knew what a real radio was but it was just too expensive!! The system was already built into the houses. But unlike to the system shown here there were stations to choose from. The little kids back then called it "radio from the wall"😊

It was tuned to "Bulgarian national radio" but had an hour for a regional radio broadcast. Mostly local news and birthday song requests :) We had it in use well into late '90s

I don't speak Bulgarian, but I can read Cyrillic. Is that word printed on it just translated as "Tonemaster"?

@lidmon

5 ай бұрын

Yes

@Geegs

4 ай бұрын

@@lidmon Noted-thank you!

@Marius150PL

4 ай бұрын

Tonmaystor to be exact when you want read it from device.

In bulgaria, radio Listens to you

@CBrasil1966

5 ай бұрын

Like cellphones nowadays 😂

So glad my namesake grandfather didn't go back to to Elena, Bulgaria in 1919. He was an the docks in NYC with his Irish wife, my father and his sister. He got a telegram saying his favorite brother, a major in Imperial Russian Calvary ( Cossacks) had been killed in St. Petersburg. We were descended from Kumans, only literate Mongols in Chen-kis Khan's time. Pops broke horses for the Park Service in Arizona after surviving the SF Earthquake .

In Malta this would be the radifusion, which was in every household of the country, except we had a selector switch and could select between 3 (what I remember) different channels. A brilliant system for an island nation that Was only 22km x 7km.

Ah, yes. If this was all you had, you couldn’t listen to VOA, the BBC, etc.

@dogwalker666

5 ай бұрын

UK had them they were on the BBC!

@meta5291

5 ай бұрын

Insulated from western propaganda 😅

@dogwalker666

5 ай бұрын

@@meta5291 you know this is how cable television started?

@meta5291

5 ай бұрын

@@dogwalker666 I replied to the wrong comment by mistake, never mind.

@dogwalker666

5 ай бұрын

@@meta5291 Dohh!

Regime listening device. 😅😂

@DoubleBob

5 ай бұрын

Those literally weren't, while your phone literally is.

@ClearGalaxies

5 ай бұрын

​@@DoubleBob then what were they?

@DoubleBob

5 ай бұрын

@@ClearGalaxies An audio receiver to listen to a station.

@andriykovalyuk2703

5 ай бұрын

​@@DoubleBob To listen, what the regime wants to tell you. These were points (one type of) of propaganda delivery. While your phone today shows you whenever you want to see.

@ahmetmutlu348

5 ай бұрын

thats what they wants you to think ;P@@andriykovalyuk2703

Was a good system for what it did, no difficulties in tuning in the signal. Mostly it broadcast music (usually classical), literature readings, poetry, dramatic plays, interspersed with short bits of news on the hour. It came thru what was called the "house antenna," ie a wire, and television as well. There was no need for rabbit ear antennas or an antenna on the roof for tv, all the channels came through clear. There were like 5-7 tv stations, which was the same amount we had growing up in Washington.

Here in UK it was called Rediffusion the 1960s

You had FM quality before FM radio actually come.

Propaganda boxes 😂

@simontopley4771

6 ай бұрын

No unthoughts now brother.

@ChristopherWoods

6 ай бұрын

Doubleplus good work brother

@kiwikemist

5 ай бұрын

Doesn't exist today though, nope! 😂

@james8449100

5 ай бұрын

Don't look at what is in your hand 😅😅😅😅😅

@nickfifteen

5 ай бұрын

​@@kiwikemistYour cell phone must suck ass because mone has more than 1 music channel.

lived in an old apartment in a post-soviet country briefly, and it had an active “radio” wire. the owner pointed it out as one of the features jokingly. i never heard of it before, and it sounded unironically cool to me. so i found a “radio” and plugged it in. i soon noticed that the broadcasting stopped at night and started again at 6am, playing classical music. so it served me as an alarm, pretty much. i got so used to the music! i even took a radio with me for a bit, hoping to find another spot like that. but it turned out active radio wires are not that common. well, maybe they are, but they are often hidden behind furniture or otherwise covered up. all the owners werent even sure if they had one, and seemed confused, like why would you need that? when i explained, they found it funny. i still searched for the wire every time though, and got lucky two more times. but the radio was taking up too much space in my backpack. i gave it an old woman i met on the train. i remember it all very vividly bc i still miss the music, its was the best way to wake up, and so authentically soviet.

I remember something similar in the UK from the 1950s. They had a volume control and a knob to select the station, IIRC there was a choice of BBC Light Programme, BBC Home Service and BBC Third Programme.

Reminds me of these cable radio things they also had in China and the Soviet Union, and they apparently still use in North Korea (although from what I heard in that country most were illegally scrapped long ago because of a famine and metal values being high at the time), some you could turn off, others you couldn't, and the main idea of those was to always have a link to state media, both for emergencies and if you were too poor or remote to have a TV or radio (or in North Korea, straight propaganda).

@MagicManICT

5 ай бұрын

All of these were straight up propaganda boxes, no matter the country. Even where the airwaves are "free to use" (like gov don't regulate who can broadcast and what), propaganda is easy enough to disseminate.

@timtim4726

4 ай бұрын

And this type wired radio still exists in Russia . Although there are very few listeners there mainly of old age.

they existed because radios would have been hacakable to listen to "non-approved" sources

@anuvisraa5786

5 ай бұрын

no they existed because they where cheap they also have radios

@aribantala

5 ай бұрын

What? There's no "hack" on using a radio. Are you so Godforsakenly stupid that you think Radios work like an Internet connection? Radios have limited signal range. And the only way you can get signal from the outside is for you to actually physically getting that radio broadcast signal. They made this because it's literally just a speaker and a potentiometer bolted to a plastic case. A radio requires a diode and antenna to receive the signal, signal modulator to allow you to tune different signals, and a heterodyne to make the received signal more clear. If you put this system on residential block, a common housing in Communist states, you can give every single room a "Radio" by just manufacturing a single Radio receiver

@aribantala

5 ай бұрын

What? There's no "hack" on using a radio. Are you that much of an ignorant that you think Radios work like an Internet connection? Radios have limited signal range. And the only way you can get signal from the outside is for you to actually physically getting that radio broadcast signal. They made this because it's literally just a speaker and a potentiometer bolted to a plastic case. A radio requires a diode and antenna to receive the signal, signal modulator to allow you to tune different signals, and a heterodyne to make the received signal more clear. If you put this system on residential block, a common housing in Communist states, you can give every single room a "Radio" by just manufacturing a single Radio receiver

@Mayflower-Yev

5 ай бұрын

I think they meant that you can configure a radio yourself and thus access stuff that wasn’t approved by the state. Something like a rogue Berlin signal telling you that Communism sucks or something.

@deesnutz42069

5 ай бұрын

nah, it's pretty obvious it's because they were cheaper.

Pa systems used to work like this main amplifier and you could use a step up transformer and then step it back down at the speaker. This would let you run long lines of speaker wire with out loosing all the signal.

@paulstubbs7678

3 ай бұрын

still used, new 100V amplifies & speakers are easily obtained from pro shops.

Radio is sound communication by radio waves, usually through the transmission of music, news, and other types of programs from single broadcast stations to multitudes of individual listeners equipped with radio receivers.

In romania you don't change the station, you steal the station

That’s pretty cool

We had a lot of them. In 90th i was a child and made "intercom" from two such radio spots, single vacuum triode, a couple of resistors and capacitors, and DPDT switch.

My brand new 2019 apartment in St. Petersburg had a socket to connect one of these. It was said to be a part of the emergency broadcast network, but should’ve worked as a normal wired “radio” too.

Pretty elegant solution for a region that doesn’t have developed consumer radio

И аз съм от българия😊

@sasholilov9171

5 ай бұрын

my apologies 😂

@georgeb5262

4 ай бұрын

Мойте съболезнования...

The design is quite nice - it's clean, minimalistic and being built in the 70s, the color is iconic

I find systems like this to be really interesting

Not being able to change the station is a huge advantage to the totalitarian state. Being cheaper as well. Good! Make it mandatory! It is a miracle you could turn it off 😂

@DoubleBob

5 ай бұрын

It's far better to have 100 stations that all push the same d&c, right?

@bloodybritbastard

5 ай бұрын

I believe there were versions that couldn't be turned off, and had the plug secured by an installer into the wall... and you got the 6 or 7 am wake up call every day, 7 days a week... Comrade, ~your~ our fields and your factories need you!

@mowtow90

5 ай бұрын

It pretty much was mandatory for all houses in the vilages. I remember this horror in my granperants house. It actually worked until the mid 2000s. I hated it with a passion because they never turned it off. They used it as morning alarm as the radio starts arround 6. It used to wake me when I was there. My granpa used to yell at me when it shut that horror off. It was tunned to the national radio that never had anything worth wasting your time on listening but they liked it. They even had an other one in the yard when they ware there.

@dogwalker666

5 ай бұрын

There was only one station, The UK had them. Look up Redifusion.

@SianaGearz

5 ай бұрын

The system was later changed to transmit 3 stations, one of them local. One of the stations was unmodulated and could be received with a passive device like this and two needed a demodulator.

I live now in Bulgaria and found one in the basement, 😅 only now i understood, so the audio was together with the 220 v electrical supply? Blagodarya

@Izzy-vz6iu

5 ай бұрын

What the English name for this thing?

@Random4x5

5 ай бұрын

Maybe cable radio. 73 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_radio

@SianaGearz

5 ай бұрын

The plug is only coincidentally mains plug shaped, the plug has smaller pin size and pitch to prevent them being plugged into mains. There isn't a mains voltage there. Typical speakers are low voltage, low impedance, high current which would make it unsuitable for transmission over long wires, so transformers coupling to higher voltage and lower current were used. I don't know exactly but by all reason probably around 100V. You see these sorts of systems in use today in every big box store, the ceiling speakers all over the place, they're coupled in via 100V transformers just like that, and it's the same set of wires just connecting dozens of speakers.

@Random4x5

5 ай бұрын

@@SianaGearz thx, that makes sense now.

@lidmon

5 ай бұрын

There is dedicated contact in older buildings for that. It is not pluged into normal 230V contact.

Поздрав от България. Радвам се, че сте наш сънародник. :)

Back in the 50s and 60s we had record players and radios here in America with speakers nearly identical to the one you showed there. If the radio or record player was plugged in, you could plug the speaker into any socket on the same circuit and it would play the music. Pretty cool

Simple, cheap and effective ❤🇵🇸

One station with no off coming to your living quarters soon.

How cool! Thanks for sharing, always happy to see and learn new things from around the world.

That is a p.a. speaker using 30 or 70 volts. At the main amp you can do anything with it. Radio, aux, cd, or just speak into it. They still use these today.

It is not because it's cheaper, it's because you shouldn't listen to anything except propaganda

@MagicManICT

5 ай бұрын

We do not broadcast propaganda. We broadcast state approved news and entertainment.

@WowCreativeUsername

5 ай бұрын

​@@MagicManICTkeywords there "state approved"

@kiwikemist

5 ай бұрын

Whereas there's no propaganda after 1991 of course. Nope, all neutral MSM, not at all pushing for war 24/7 and inventing fake "culture wars". Totally propaganda free.

@kiwikemist

5 ай бұрын

Whereas there's no propaganda after 1991, it's all neutral yessir. No pushing for war or fake "culture war". No sir, it's all factual information.

@tesmith47

5 ай бұрын

America has the illusion of choice but everything is CAPITALIST PROPAGANDA

This is essentially a receiver for a "wired radio" service. We called those "radio spots". There were special outlets you would plug these into (which BTW were identical to normal ones, except for the word "Radio" on them) and they would allow you to listen to whatever stations were available. This system was very common in the soviet days and survived way past the fall of the USSR in some places. My grandparents used a device like this to listen to the national radio right until the service operator started charging for the service IIRC in mid 2000s or so.

This reminds me of the professor's radio on Gilligan's Island.😂

We've had that in the Netherlands as well from the 20s until the early 70s, called the 'draadomroep' (wire broadcast). With an extra pre-switch you could choose between four channels. The sound quality was better than AM, but it was eventually taken over by FM and cable radio.

I grew up with the same "radiospots" in Rissia. When I was 5 or 6, I managed to plug one into a 220v power outlet. The sound was so loud and terrifying that I immediately unplugged it and luckily, the unit kept working well. Now I understand that using the same plug dimensions for the power outlets and these low voltage units was a design flaw. Later in the 1980s we got the new and updated version with 3 channels to choose from.

PA speaker for wired broadcast, very common in the Eastern Bloc. Here in Poland we called them "kołchoźnik" (literally: kolkhoz worker) or "szczekaczka" (barker). They were mainly popular in institutions or factories, but wired broadcast in residential settings was also used, especially back in '50s/60s when lots of countryside was still not electrified and a wired broadcast network was the only way to get radio to people's homes, apart from crystal radios or battery-powered tube ones. Wired broadcast networks ran either at 30V or 120V nominal voltage, a bit different from modern PA that uses 70V or 100V. What's interesting is the amplifiers that fed these networks were usually built with vacuum tubes (solid state became popular only in '70s and '80s) and often 100W using four EL34 tubes. If an amp could be wired either for 30V or 120V by changing the connections on the output transformer's secondary windings (four sections), it could power a 8Ω speaker system with only minimal impedance mismatch. People sometimes used decommissioned tube PA amps as instrumental amplifiers, usually adding an external preamp or modding the amp.

The high school I went to in Bulgaria still used an audio system like the one in the video for the school bells in 2023

We had similar machines installed in schools, late 1950s early 1960s . I remember well, seeing the huge( I was quite young) control system just like this one, in the principals office.

The cool thing is that it looks easy to repurpose one of these as a bluetooth speaker without modifying the original.

We had something similar in our house, when i was a kid in the 1960s. Ours however, looked like a polished wooden radio, and had four programmes you choose from, with, via a selector switch.

this video brings nostalgic memories for me i used to listen one like this in Slovakia in 1989 when I was a student at the University of Bratislava

When I was a kid back in the 70s I built one of these using a little AM FM radio inside of a speaker housing.

Yes, I can approve that in Latvia in the end of 80, when I was a kid, we had that kind of radio sockets on the wall, but we never used it - first of all we didn’t have that radio device, secondly we had a tv and a radio. But thanks for reminding that those kind of things existed. And actually I never knew how the radio device for the radio-spot looked like 😅

And now Bulgaria is a high tech hub building what seems like half the worlds software. So much progress!

Thank you for this video! It's very interesting to learn about the history of your country.

Now I understand why my grandparents always called their radio a "wireless"