Progress on scanning the RCA Red Books

One of our U.S. members, John Kusching, has been very active in recent weeks scanning information from the RCA "Red Books."  These are annual volumes produced by RCA with several pages of detailed information about each RCA model, including service and alignment instructions, schematics, pictorial wiring diagrams, and the like.

John has now completed scans of the 1933, 1934, 1935, and 1937 Red Books, and he is continuing to acquire more volumes and keep scanning.  Information from RCA Red Books now includes over 1900 pages scanned and uploaded, covering 240 models.  John has taken the extra time to scan with high resolution and to process the scanned images following the recommended RMorg guidelines, so the image quality is top notch - basically matching the quality of the original printed pages in the RCA Red Books, yet still keeping the file sizes small enough so that downloading time is minimal.

John is a new member of RMorg, having joined in November 2010.  His level of activity and uploading during the few months he has been with us is rather amazing!

An update on statistics for U.S. models:

• 67,729 models in total
• 27,047 with pictures (40% of total)
• 46,463 with schematics (69% of total)

Comparison to statistics for all countries:

• 187,069 models in total
• 104,045 with pictures (55% of total)
• 95,462 with schematics (51% of total)

Many thanks to John and others who have worked systematically to provide detailed information for RCA.  Thanks to these efforts, RMorg's data is beginning to reach more of a critical mass to be a truly useful resource for U.S. manufacturers and models.  Although there is still plenty more work to do for U.S. models, real progress is being made!

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Considering that RCA's vast library from their research lab is slowly disapearing, and does not have it's own web site anymore, this is VERY good news! 

Too many people out there, take radio for granted, to the point that valuable information is being lost and destroyed on a daily basis.  Anything that anybody has, should be scanned and uploaded to RMorg before the information  is lost for good.

All I can say,  with all of todays technology, cell phones, internet, etc  the survivors of Japan's big earthquake are now, all relying on radio for information!

 

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I have completed uploading the data from the following RCA Victor Service Notes Books, also known as the RCA "Redbooks":

1) 1923-1928

2) 1929-1930

3) 1931-1932

4) 1933

5) 1934

6) 1935

7) 1936

8) 1937

9) 1938

10) 1939

11) 1940

12) 1943-1946 (Volume III)

You can use the "Schematic Finder" to locate a radio model in its associated RCA Redbook. Unfortunately RCA did not add page numbers to the  first 5 books and so you will get a "Page 0" as the page indication for models in these books.  From 1935 and beyond, RCA added page numbers and so the Schematic Finder will indicate the correct page number along with the year in which the model can be found.  For Redbooks that span multiple years, I have used the lowest year to indicate the proper book.

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