02 August, 2014

Nice radio-related stamp

A few weeks ago I had one of my rare visits to the post office. As I was waiting, I saw a display of a new series of stamps and I just had to buy the one shown here. What caught my attention was not really the artist, but rather the Kurér portable radio.

The stamp was of course not about the radio but was issued in commemoration of the 100 year anniversary of the birth of Alf Prøysen. The English Wikipedia page has this to say about him:

Alf Prøysen (23 July 1914 - 23 November 1970), was a writer and musician from Norway. Prøysen was one of the most important Norwegian cultural personalities in the second half of the twentieth century, and he made significant contributions to literature, music, TV, and radio.

One of his main characters was "Teskjekjerringa" called Mrs. Pepperpot in English. She is shown here in the second stamp in the series. I remember this story very well from my own childhood in the 60's as told in the characteristic calm and soothing voice of Prøysen himself. The character eventually appeared in 23 different languages. The radio is of course here because this and others of his plays were very popular on radio in the 50's and 60's.

And it was this radio, the Kurér (= Courier), that made me buy the stamp. It was a highly successful portable radio from the Radionette factory in Oslo from 1950 to 1958. It has four valves and covers long wave, medium wave, ' the trawler band', and short wave. It has room for batteries (90 Volts and 1.5 Volts). But luckily it also has a built-in mains supply - the 90 Volt battery is hard to find these days. A total of 224 000 were produced and it was exported to many countries especially in the Middle East. It is very easy to repair even today.

I would think the most popular version today among collectors is the dark red one shown in the stamp. I have a grey one shown here with a simple medium wave transmitter that I have described before on top.


Read more here (Sorry, nothing but Norwegian links could be found) :

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3 comments:

  1. OH3KAV05 August, 2014 11:54

    Nice stamp and nice radio!

    I believe I saw a Kurér radio on a flea market or second hand store in Northern Norway few years ago. In the same place there was also two portable radios which had some not so usual SW bands, probably intented to be used on fishing boats. These were probably also Norwegian (or Danish?) products, but I just can't remember the manufacturer. Design was to some extend similar to Kurér and probably made in 1950's or so.
    Actually, I have seen some tube-era Radionette radios also here in Finland, but never really thought it was a Norwegian manufacturer. And nowadays, chinese Radionettes are sold in Gigantti/Elgiganten....

    73 de Ari OH3KAV

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  2. Sverre Holm05 August, 2014 14:00

    Hi Ari,

    Yes, that strange SW band is the trawler band or Fiskeribølgen which runs from the top of the medium wave band, about 1.6 MHz, to about 2.4 MHz. I remember it from my youth as a band where we could hear fishermen calling home. The communications was on AM and completely open, but often we could only hear one side of the conversation.

    There were other similar radios at the time, like the Østfold (Mascot) Astra and Darling and I'm sure many others as well, see the pages of the Norwegian Radio Historical Society

    (There is a translation facility there, otherwise perhaps the Swedish that many Finns know is sufficient even to understand the Norwegian)

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  3. OH3KAV05 August, 2014 15:23

    Lot's of interesting stuff there on NRHF's website.

    Now I am pretty sure the radios I once saw were the "koffertradios med Fiskeribølgen" by David Andersen Radio A/S. The price asked was unfortunately a bit on the high side, but that seems to be quite often the case these days...

    73 de Ari OH3KAV

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