[Doug Houston]

To amplify a bit on shutter dials. The upper level Zenith sets had each wave band on separate dial scale segments. As the band switch was changed, a pair of segments would open out of sight, revealing the set of scales for the next band. It was a rather intricate mechanism, and worked very well. Since I was a kid in the days that those gimmicks were in the stores, and families of my friends bought radios, the shutter dial and the flywheel tuning did attract attention, and I still believe that they both had a stimulus, on sales, though perhaps not as great as the intricacy of the gimmick.

Another Zenith feature was the softly suspended, spring-mounted chassis. The controls and dial bobbled about for a moment if you tweaked a control a bit gingerly. It certainly helped in preventing feedback from the speaker, but the operator often suffered from blurred vision while tuning the set.

In the mid to late thirties, tuning mechanisms and dial designs took some interesting, and some times, amusing forms. All were to lure the fancy and the imagination of the customer.

Zenith is credited with having had the first preselected tuning mrchanism, in 1928, I believe. RCA followed in 1931, with a motor-driven preset tuning system, and a wired remote control. Both of these were on higher level radios in the line.