Science Art: Two-Step Multi-Audi-Fone ad, 1916.

16 October 2023 grant Featured, Science Art 0

Scientific illustration of early radio equipment, in an advertisement for the Two-Step Multi-Audi-Fone, which comes with a pocket receiver and a "special head set." The M.A.F. costs $60 unless you order it after October 1, in which case it's $75. Which is quite a lot in 1916 dollars.
Scientific illustration of early radio equipment, in an advertisement for the Two-Step Multi-Audi-Fone, which comes with a pocket receiver and a "special head set." The M.A.F. costs $60 unless you order it after October 1, in which case it's $75. Which is quite a lot in 1916 dollars.

This is an ad from, as Thomas Dolby put it, the Golden Age of wireless. More literally, it’s from the October, 1916, issue of The Electrical Experimenter, a Hugo Gernsback publication, which you can flip through here, on archive.org. Don’t forget: “You benefit from mentioning The Electrical Experimenter when writing to advertisers.”

Looking up the price in an inflation calculator, it says $60 in 1916 was worth what $1,694.25 will get you today, and the after-October-1 price of $75 in 1916 is now, more than a century after October 1, worth $2,117.81. I guess we missed out on some significant savings.