Bill Clarke with the author's fully-restored WS122 transceiver. Bill designed the modulator and much of the switching mechanism for the WS122, while two other engineers - Lindsay Cobb and Geoff Frew - designed the receiver and transmitter sections and the vibrator power supply

VINTAGE RADIO has several different aspects that are of interest to its devotees. In the main, it involves collecting and restoring old radio receivers but other areas of interest include the collection of historical information, advertising material, and instruction manuals and data books from the era.

However, there is one area in which very little interest has historically been shown – the designers of the equipment and the circuit designs they produced.

The original designers of our vintage radio equipment were something of a mixed bunch. Many were highly qualified electrical and radio engineers but they also included many self-taught people with no formal education in the electrical or radio fields. But how many designers have you seen mentioned in vintage radio articles or in the historical literature? The answer is "very few, if any".

Of course, very few of the designers from the valve era are still alive. They are a mostly forgotten group of people but they engineered the many unique Australian designs that we can rightly be proud of today.

In the October 2002 issue, I described the WS122 portable high-frequency (HF) radio transceiver built by Radio Corporation for the Australian Army during WW2. About a week after the publication of the article, I received a phone call from Lewis "Bill" Clarke. I’d never spoken with Bill before but he introduced himself and told me that he was one of the designers of this set.

It was too good an opportunity to miss. I asked Bill if I could interview him when I next came down to Melbourne. He agreed and a few weeks later we sat down for a very interesting trip down memory lane.