[BC] Getting a phone on the air

[Dana Puopolo]

Well, there was the old inductive pick up that I used to have as a 
kid. It was a thin, flat piece of iron with a lot of fine wire wound 
around it in a
plastic case. You placed it under the phone's base near its internal 
transformer and hooked it to a mike input. It even worked on extension phones
that were not off hook! The quality wasn't great, but it did work! 
They also used to have the ones with the suction cup that you put on 
the handset.

-D

------ Original Message ------
Received: Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:24:06 AM EST
From: Donna Halper <dlh at donnahalper.com>

of "a special telephone-microphone pick-up."  The photo shows an 
announcer, identified as Jack Little, talking into an old-style phone 
with that candlestick style (there's a name for that type of phone, 
but I don't recall it) .  There is a microphone, but it's next to the 
other announcer on the show, Harry Giese.

So, the suggestions you good folks offered about how America's Town 
Meeting of the Air might have put callers on the air live... that was in
1935.  Would the same process have been possible for telephones in 
the late 1920s?