"Radio & TV Course", Sprayberry Academy of Radio, 1945 Edition

Or, How To Learn to Repair Radios & TVs in only n Easy Lessons.

I don't find much history on the Sprayberry Academy of Radio, except that they were located at 111 N. Canal Street, Chicago 6, Illinois. At some point they were located in Pueblo, Colorado (or, perhaps had an office there). Another ad from 1940 puts an office in 355-J Univserity Place, N.W. Washington, D.C. Frank L. Sprayberry is listed as President (and presumably founder) Along about 1946, the school apparently began to emphasize Television repair.

There's a pretty good short history of the Sprayberry Academy of Radio at Arcane Radio Trivia, (http://tenwatts.blogspot.com). He found more than I could about this man and his school.

The booklet "No. TV-14" was originally from George Burk, by way of Rich Post, KB8TAD (the later, of Boatanchor Pix). Although I only have the one booklet, I'll be on the lookout for more.

Many thanks to Dave Holder for allowing his copy of the 1945 edition to be scrutinized, generally pawed-upon, and eventually, scanned.

All documents open in a new window. Many thanks to ARF (AntiqueRadios.com Forum) for the genesis of the idea to gather together these old 'home study' courses and put them online.

UPDATE, 9/14/2012: Fixed a problem with downloading Lesson ND-1.

1945 Edition

• Lesson ND-1, Introduction To Radio's First Principles
• Lesson ND-2, The Two Basic Forms Of Electricity
• Lesson ND-3, How Lines Of Force Are Applied In Radio And Television
• Lesson ND-4, The Elements Of Radio Transmission And Reception ^*
• Lesson ND-5, How To Read Radio Diagrams And Symbols
• Lesson ND-6, Resistance As A Property Of All Electrical Circuits
• Lesson ND-7, Coils in Electronic Circuits (missing)
• Lesson ND-8, Condensers in Radio Circuits (missing)
• Lesson ND-9, Coils And Condensers In Combination - Resonance ^**
• Lesson ND-10, Radio Meters - Test Instruments ^**
• Lesson ND-11, Fundamentals Of Radio Tubes - Rectifier Circuits ^*
• Lesson ND-12, Rectifier Tubes - Tube Standards And Ratings
• Lesson ND-13, How A Radio Tube Makes A Weak Signal Stronger
• Lesson ND-14, Vacuum Tube Amplification At High Frequencies (missing)
• Lesson ND-15, Amplification At Low Frequencies
• Lesson ND-16, Types Of A.F. Amplifiers, Amplifier Classes
• Lesson ND-17, How An R.F. Signal Is Demodulated, Detected, Rectified, Etc.
• Lesson ND-18, Speakers For Radio
• Lesson ND-19, Power Transformers For Radio
• Lesson ND-20, Choke Coils - Filter Systems and Voltage Dividers
• Lesson ND-21, A Six Color Story of the Tuned Radio Frequency Receiver ^*
• Lesson ND-22, The Superheterodyne Receiver
• Lesson ND-23, Superheterodyne Oscillator Tracking and Super Control Tubes
• Lesson ND-24, How Superheterodyne Circuits Are Made To Reject Unwanted Signals
• Lesson ND-25, Automatic Volume or Sensitivity Controls
• Lesson ND-26, Six Color Story of the Superheterodyne with AVC
• Lesson ND-27, Improvements Which Simplify Receiver Operation and Decibels
• Lesson ND-28, Multiple Band Receivers
• Lesson ND-29, Microphones and Phonograph Pick-Up Units
• Lesson ND-30, Transmission Lines, Pads and Attenuators
• Lesson ND-31, Public Address or AF Sound Systems
• Lesson ND-32, How Sound Is Employed In the Movies
• Lesson ND-33, How The Qualities Of Sound Reproduction Are Controlled ^**
• Lesson 7X1, Radio Construction and Repair Work
• Lesson 7X2, Radio Construction and Repair Work
• Lesson 7X3, Radio Construction and Repair Work
• Reference Lesson 1R-1 - Repair Radio Sets Without Meters (incomplete)

^* indicates source material was slightly damaged, resulting in a lower quality scan. Replacement scans for the booklet(s) would be appreciated.

^** indicates source material wasn't scannable.

1946 Edition, Including TV

I only have the one issue from this series.

• No. TV-14, How Radio Tubes Are Tested

Colophon

The "No. TV-14" booklet arrived originally scanned at 300 dpi, and although it was scanned at grayscale, the images are superior. I don't know the original size of the booklets; for now I've resized them to about 6.6 inches tall by about 4.5 inches wide, screen resolution of 96 dpi.

Still working on sizing the 1945 Edition. At 150 dpi, the half-tones look pretty bad and the text ain't much better, so I've moved to 300 dpi scanning.

Scanning and Preparation Tools are:
A PC running Ubuntu 12.04 on a dual-core, AMD-64 motherboard, using Simple Scan and Scan2PDF for document assembly into PDF. GIMP Image Editor 2.6.11 was used for any touch-up or image scaling.