Gilert Davey's Radio Sets

What is the secret of Gilbert Davey's
popularity? . . . he is a skilled amateur
who is tremendously enthusiastic about
his hobby.

GILBERT DAVEY (1913 - 2011)
Prior to Gilbert Davey's death on 6 April 2011, information for this sketch had been gathered solely from published sources. Following Mr Davey's death, I am indebted to his daughter for some leads to much new material, and to a former colleague for information relating to his wartime role and later life. All sources are noted at the end of this page.

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Gilbert Davey in about 1936, in Fireman's uniform - an aspect of his life yet to be researched. Photo courtesy Claire Davey; reproduced by kind permission.

Gilbert Davey had become interested in radio as a boy when his father asked a friend to build the family a three-valve receiver (detector and two transformer-coupled LF stages, with a horn loudspeaker). Seeing the boy's interest, the builder of this set gave Gilbert some spare components and old magazines, and he started to experiment. (1)

Enthusiasts in the 1920s and 1930s often had to make their own components, especially coils. If a set worked first time, this was a great surprise. The young experimenter had the use of a garden shed as a "shack" which, although self-contained, suffered somewhat from damp. (2) A little later, damp indoors caused a problem too: a series-wired extension loudspeaker stopped working when decorators distempered the kitchen. Moisture soaked through the cotton-covered wiring, temporarily silencing the extension speaker but leaving the main speaker working. Sound gradually returned to the kitchen as the insulation dried out! (3)

By the age of 16, Davey was writing freelance articles on radio. Although these often earned him more than his insurance job, he welcomed the security this gave him during the depression years of the late 1920s and early 1930s. (4)

His earliest articles are yet to be found, but by the end of 1934 he had contributed articles to Modern Wireless, Popular Wireless and to the fledgling Practical Wireless. Among his Army records is a typed list (5), believed to have been prepared for his enlistment in the Royal Signals (see below). According to this, Davey had by 1941 written 32 radio articles. The vast majority of these consisted of hints and tips for short-wave listening, including a 13-part series entitled "At the Short-Waver's Bench" for Practical Wireless in 1935. However there are several designs for complete sets for both short-wave and broadcast-band use. Unfortunately, many of his Practical Wireless articles were published anonymously, and it is only the above list that confirms his authorship. Davey himself commented on this many years later (see below).

These pre-war articles confirm that Davey was a keen short-wave listener and, by his early twenties, a seasoned experimenter. I have so far found nothing to suggest that he held a pre-war transmitting licence. A recurring theme is his interest in re-visiting some older receiver designs by radio pioneers that, by the mid-1930s, were generally regarded as obsolete. He considered that these designs - though often quite simple - were still fruitful for experimentation if adapted with the best components of the day. See Pre-War Writing.

In Davey's pre-war writing, he adopts a noticeably more distant style than his well-known chatty post-war style, referring to himself in many of his articles as "the writer". This is understandable; before the war he was writing for adults and was conforming to the fashion of the time, whereas his post-war writing was for young people. However, his pride in his expertise comes through, and one would little suspect that he was barely into his twenties.

Davey continued to follow technical developments in other fields with interest. When Wireless World published a design for a resistance-coupled "Quality Amplifier" in the mid-30s, he saw it as a sign of hope for real improvement, even though there was no broadcast input source available then that could do it justice. The innovation of negative feedback shortly afterwards was equally promising. (6)

During World War 2, Davey served in the Royal Corps of Signals, achieving the rank of Major. He took part in clandestine operations in France, but said little about these exploits, claiming always that he was still bound by the Official Secrets Act. (7) His editor Jack Cox relates that Davey, stationed in Germany at the end of the War, was the first British amateur to operate a transmitter in the British sector of Berlin. With callsign D2AH, he made contact with all parts of the world on the 10-metre band with just 10 watts' transmitting power on telephony. His US friends made him a member of ARABS, the society of American Radio Amateurs of Berlin. (8)

Davey himself states that when he was "overseas for some years", he had a transmitter operating and was able to keep in touch with his home quite easily. (9) I have no evidence that any of his transmissions were part of the Allies' operations, or official in any way, and we may surely assume that the transmissions directed at his home would have been made only from safely liberated territory. It seems likely that Davey and others simply used their expertise in the free-for-all in Europe at the end of the War. After his death, some effort has gone into trying to establish whether Davey became a licensed amateur operator in the UK, but no evidence for this has emerged. (10)

Jack Cox, Editor,
Boy's Own Paper, 1946-67,
and of Gilbert Davey's books.

Copyright © Lutterworth Press;
reproduced by kind permission.

After his return home, Davey took up employment with the Pearl Assurance Company in 1947. (11) He was to remain with Pearl Assurance for the rest of his working life, occupying various posts at Pearl offices in the West End, Edgware and latterly Peterborough. (12)

Quite by chance during his spell in Berlin, Davey had met Jack Cox, who was shortly afterwards to take over the editorship of Boy’s Own Paper. (13) Once in the job, Cox assembled a panel of experts to write practical articles and respond to readers' queries. He recruited Davey as Radio Correspondent; so began a mutually enriching association that was to last until Cox's death in 1981.

The Boy’s Own Paper, that bastion of British morality, had been severely limited by paper shortages during the war, and this continued for some time. Gilbert Davey’s articles sometimes appeared without circuit diagrams or practical layouts; the additional details were only sent out to those who wanted to build the sets. A succession of Davey designs was published during the late 40s and the 50s, calculated to appeal to the active older boy. They included an early version of the beginner’s one-valver (see THE BEGINNER'S 1-VALVER), a Simple Three-Valve set, a Holiday Radio, and a portable Cycle Radio - not to be used on the move! (For further details of these three, see YOUR DAVEY SETS.) Other designs included an all-mains two-valve receiver, a high-fidelity amplifier, and a bedside radio. The BOP constantly carried advertisements from training colleges and the armed services inviting boys to train as radio operators or technicians (demand far exceeded supply), as the advertisers doubtless knew of the popularity of his articles.

By 1957, Davey had been a regular contributor to the Boy's Own Paper for over ten years. In September - November of that year, he appeared on BBC Television's Studio ‘E’ programme with a six-part series describing the construction of a simple one-valve receiver. Demand for the printed leaflet was enormous, and many radio enthusiasts and professionals still remember the series as a formative experience. Davey himself seems to have regarded it as an important event; he preserved a set of programme scripts through several house moves. (See THE BBC SETS > and subsidiary pages for full details and leaflet downloads.)

Extract from
Boy's Own Paper, December 1957.

Copyright © Lutterworth Press;
quoted by kind permission.

An article in the December 1957 BOP entitled “Hobbies for the Modern Boy” (unattributed but probably written by Jack Cox) carried this passage revealing just how popular his articles were, and how popular his Studio ‘E’ series had proved to be:

"Gilbert Davey has topped the popularity poll among BOP contributors for the past ten years. This is all the more surprising when you realise that he rarely has more than three articles a year in the magazine. But his subject is Amateur Radio and that seems to be just about the most consistent of all boys' hobbies.

"Television has had no effect whatever on the making of sound radio sets by keen and enthusiastic amateurs - in fact, the reverse! Gilbert Davey started his first BBC Television series in the Studio ‘E’ programme in October last, showing viewers how to make a simple one-valve radio set. Within a few days of the first programme he had received over 26,000 letters!

"What is the secret of Gilbert Davey's popularity? In the first place he is a skilled amateur who is tremendously enthusiastic about his hobby. He is not a radio dealer or a professional radio engineer; in fact he is an insurance inspector who lives in Middlesex. Jack Cox, Editor of BOP, found him by sheer chance ten years ago, and he has worked exclusively for BOP ever since. He has had 8,000 letters in a week from BOP readers.

"The sets which Gilbert Davey designs and builds, and then shows you how to make in simple language, are those which appeal to boys. A Portable Cycle Radio Set, a Three-Valve Receiver for Bedside or Camp, a Midget Two-Valve Receiver are typical.” (14)

In October 1957, at the same time as the BBC Studio ‘E’ series, Davey's first book, Fun with Radio, was published by Edmund Ward. This featured designs that had appeared in the Boy's Own Paper over the post-war years, and was edited by BOP editor Jack Cox. No transistor designs appeared in Fun with Radio for the stated reason that they were still too experimental and could be an expensive risk for the young amateur. (15) This suggests that Fun with Radio was in preparation for some time - perhaps more than a year - before publication, and the reason given for not including transistor designs reflected Davey's opinion at the outset of preparing the book. His daughter remembers helping him with the lengthy task of proof-reading the diagrams for his books. (16)

By the time that Fun with Radio appeared, Davey's BOP articles (January and October 1957) had featured transistor designs, but carried warnings about their still-variable characteristics and experimental nature. Later editions of Fun with Radio did feature transistor designs.

In March - April 1959, Davey was back on BBC Television with another series, this time for a two-transistor radio design. Studio ‘E’ had by this time been re-named Focus. Demand for the Focus leaflet was nearly as keen as for the Studio ‘E’ leaflet; there were 25,000 applications immediately, followed by a steady demand of around 100 requests per day for some time. (17) (See The Focus Transistor Set for details and leaflet downloads.)

I have no evidence that Davey appeared on Blue Peter once it had supplanted Studio ‘E’ and Focus in catering for children of all ages. He appeared on ITV, but I have not so far researched these appearances.

Several Davey Boy’s Own Paper designs were reprinted in the Boy's Own Companion and the Boy’s Own Annual, both offshoots of BOP. For example, the June 1961 BOP and the 1962 Companion featured an interesting metal-chassis version of the Beginner's 1-Valver. (See THE BEGINNER'S 1-VALVER.)

'Lady Jayne' hair clips,
ancient and modern.

It was the ladies of his family who
came up with the ideal solution . . .

One simple but useful idea for constructors came from a quite unexpected quarter. This was passed on in the November 1963 BOP. With the advent of transistors, Davey had been looking for a way to avoid the need for a “third hand” to hold the pliers serving as a heat-sink when soldering these and other heat-sensitive components. It was the ladies of his family who came up with the ideal solution – a ‘Lady Jayne’ sprung metal clip, as used by hairdressers when setting hair! (18)

As a contributor, Gilbert Davey was one of the panel of BOP experts who answered readers’ queries. Occasional correspondents innocently asked for details to build transmitters, and always received stern reminders from him about the stringent requirements – including a radio theory exam and a 12 words-per-minute Morse code test - before a GPO transmitting licence could be granted. (19)

Lest it be thought that all Davey's correspondents were relatively well-off British boarding-school types, he received letters from BOP readers throughout the Commonwealth. Indeed he is reported to have remarked that some of his most enthusiastic correspondents came from the poorest districts of South Africa. (20)

The Boy’s Own Paper faced difficult times in the early sixties with the rise of the pop music industry, competition from other teen magazines, and the fact that copies of BOP were often shared among many readers - a practice that had been actively encouraged during and after the war. Davey designs of this period included a short-wave receiver capable of progressive upgrading, and a basic electric guitar using a headphone as a transducer. The Boy’s Own Paper ceased publication in early 1967, although its offshoot Boy's Own Annual survived into the mid-1970s.

Later, Jack Cox recalled that technical and hobby articles had always been well received; as a young BOP reader, he had built radio sets himself to the designs of an earlier contributor. Indeed, he went so far as to wonder whether he should have shifted the magazine’s emphasis toward these topics and away from the derring-do fiction for which it is chiefly remembered. (21)

Gilbert Davey went on to write several more Fun with . . . books, all edited by Jack Cox, including Fun with Short Waves, Fun with Electronics, Fun with Transistors, Fun with Hi-Fi and Fun with Silicon Chips in Modern Radio. This, the last title to be written, was published in 1981, the year of Jack Cox's death. To mark the occasion, the Peterborough Evening Telegraph printed the article reproduced below. The picture shows Davey beside a splendid 1920s radio set with a horn loudspeaker. Rather than his "first radio" as captioned, I wonder if this could be the set mentioned above, built by a family friend, that sparked his first interest in radio.

Article and photo from the
Peterborough Evening Telegraph,
23 October 1981, marking the pub-
lication of Gilbert Davey's last book
Fun with Silicon Chips in
Modern Radio.

Copyright © Peterborough Evening Telegraph/
Johnston Press plc;
reproduced by kind permission.
Prepared from a British Library image,
copyright © British Library Board:
Shelfmark 3837-44 (1981) NPL.
With acknowledgments to Claire Davey.

Rather than Davey's 'first radio' as captioned,
could this be the set, built by a family friend,
that sparked his first interest in radio?

Fun with Radio ran to six editions in the UK; the sixth was published in 1978 by Kaye & Ward. (For fuller details of articles and books, see DAVEY SOURCE PAGES.)

Both as a contributor to Boy's Own Paper and as author of his own books, Davey often sought or was offered products to try out and report upon. He stressed that when commenting on an item of equipment he did so in order to inform his readers about that general class of product; he did not necessarily believe that a product he mentioned was superior to a rival product. (22) One tape recorder did come in for some gentle criticism, and some rigorous testing. This machine could not faithfully play tapes recorded on other machines because it ran at "differential speed", i.e. a non-standard tape speed. However its push-button controls survived undamaged when thoroughly tested by Davey's daughter and her friends! (23)

He never pushed theory too hard, but encouraged his readers to learn circuit symbols, and perhaps ease themselves into the theory by taking a radio periodical or consulting theory books at a library. (24)

Safety was dealt with carefully - this was especially important for the mains-powered designs, many of which did not use isolated power supplies. Davey always advised using a loudspeaker, rather than headphones, with mains-powered sets. (25) Advice was given on proper earth connections where appropriate, and switching off when possible before carrying out adjustments. (26) Properly constructed cabinets were insisted upon for mains-powered sets, to protect young children and inquisitive pets, especially cats. (27) One wonders whether the specific mention of cats was the result of unfortunate experience; if so, one can but hope that Tiddles survived with just a fright and temporary loss of dignity!

Throughout Davey's writing career, his articles and designs kept pace with new developments (silicon chips and kit-sets, for example). But he continued to include simple crystal and valve designs - in spite of some reviewers’ criticisms - so that young experimenters could have the chance to grasp first principles and also make use of old components. (28)

He did admit to difficulty reconciling himself to some aspects of technical progress. He regretted the demise of the old 2-volt valve types whose freedom from background noise had been so valuable for short-wave receivers. (29) He found it hard to ascend the learning curve when transistors took over, but knew he must because they were the future. (30) He was dubious when quadraphonic sound systems were announced in the early 70s; were humans destined to develop four ears? (31)

Nonetheless, Davey was a keen hi-fi listener, and built some of the classic Mullard valve amplifiers including the "3-3" and "5-10". (32) He was very much in favour of keeping one hi-fi setup with which to enjoy speech and music without continually worrying about the quality of reproduction, and leaving it alone; experiments were best carried out elsewhere. (33) His musical tastes included classical and light music, opera and operetta, and organ music with enough bass to shake the floor. (34) It is not recorded whether the organ music caused a nuisance, but his daughter recalls that his late-night short-wave listening did frequently lead to emphatic appeals to switch off! (35)

As an amateur himself, Davey tried to keep in mind the problems faced by the young constructor: lack of experience and skill, lack of tools or test gear, and especially the changing availability of components. Thus when the beginner's one-valver first appeared in Boy's Own Paper in February 1948, it featured an easily-available 2-volt triode and a home-made coil. When miniature pentodes and commercially-made coils became available, the design was adapted to take advantage of them. For later versions, when commercially-made coils to suit the simple circuit had become difficult to obtain, a home-made coil was once again featured.

In anticipation of the 1,000th edition of Practical Wireless (July 1990), veteran readers were invited to write in with memories of the magazine's early days. In his response (36), published in that edition and reproduced below, Davey referred to its former Editor F J Camm's lack of generosity with by-lines when his (Davey's) articles were published in the 1930s, although he had received an attribution for an article published in 1954, in the last years of Camm's Editorship, by which time he was better known.

The letter reveals that Davey was still experimenting into the 1990s. With his letter, he had enclosed a copy of his PW March 1935 article for an all-mains short-wave three-valve set, whose circuit was reproduced alongside. Davey reported that the prototype set was still in working order. (A download for this design is available on the Pre-War writing page.) Also still in working order in 1990 was the set built by a family friend that first sparked Davey's interest in radio, albeit with many alterations.

Gilbert Davey's letter to
Practical Wireless, following
the Editor's invitation to veteran
readers to share memories of the
magazine's early days.

Copyright © Warners Group Publications plc;
reproduced by kind permission of the Editor,
Practical Wireless.
Image from site author's copy.

Gilbert Davey's letter in the 1,000th
edition of Practical Wireless.

Gilbert Davey was proud of his long association with the Boy's Own Paper and its offshoot publications, and with Jack Cox. He was equally gratified that he had introduced thousands of boys and girls to a fascinating hobby and, in many cases, a rewarding career. (37) All the while, he kept his life with Pearl Assurance and his writing career quite separate. To his Company associates he was quiet, modest and unambitious; they knew little or nothing of his spare-time radio writing career or the huge postbags that it used to bring him. (38)

Gilbert Davey died at Peterborough on 6 April 2011, aged 97.