{"id":3710,"date":"2011-09-13T09:09:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T23:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/09\/13\/mcmurdo-silver-a-man-with-the-knack\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T15:56:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T05:56:28","slug":"mcmurdo-silver-a-man-with-the-knack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/09\/13\/mcmurdo-silver-a-man-with-the-knack\/","title":{"rendered":"McMurdo Silver — A Man with The Knack"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the latest podcast I talked about McMurdo Silver. I noted that many radio pioneers (and many modern-day radio wizards) have very strong and distinctive names. This guy’s name is clearly in that category. Here is a 1929 bio on OM McMurdo: <\/span>
<\/span>http:\/\/durenberger.com\/resources\/documents\/MCMURDOSILVER0629.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

And here is some additional info. From <\/span>http:\/\/hhscott.com\/e_h_scott_2.htm<\/a>: <\/span><\/span>
<\/span>
E.H. Scott had several competitors. The most significant among them was a dashing young genius named McMurdo Silver. Silver was a continuous contributor to technical articles to Radio News magazine (the predecessor of Popular Electronics) throughout the 1930’s. He was a polo player, gun collector, and is said to have been quite a bon vivant. Formerly the president of Silver-Marshall, Inc., he set up the McMurdo Silver Corp. and began building custom high-fidelity receivers in competition with Scott.<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

While good, his receivers were never quite the equal of Scott\u2019s. One of Silver\u2019s most famous owners was Dr. Lee DeForest, inventor of the vacuum tube. DeForest owned a Silver Masterpiece V and praised it in the final chapters of his autobiography. Throughout the 1930s, Scott\u2019s and Silver\u2019s advertisements would do battle trying to \u201cone up\u201d the other\u2019s in technical achievement. Features were stolen and lawsuits initiated. Finally, Scott won the battle and bought out the failing Silver in 1940. Scott then introduced a new, bottom-of-the-line receiver and designated it as the Scott Masterpiece. I do not know if the gesture was meant as a tribute to his archenemy or to rub salt in the wounds. Silver eventually committed suicide in 1947.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a>Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a>Our Book Store: http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest podcast I talked about McMurdo Silver. I noted that many radio pioneers (and many modern-day radio wizards) have very strong and distinctive names. This guy’s name is clearly in that category. Here is a 1929 bio on OM McMurdo: http:\/\/durenberger.com\/resources\/documents\/MCMURDOSILVER0629.pdf And here is some additional info. From http:\/\/hhscott.com\/e_h_scott_2.htm: E.H. Scott had several … Continue reading “McMurdo Silver — A Man with The Knack”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,31,410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antarctica","category-radio-history","category-silver-mcmurdo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3712,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions\/3712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}