MAN OVER RADIO: Calling Dick Tracy!
EDUARDO: Tonight on History Detectives:
TUKUFU: What drew me to this poster was the shocking imagery.
It's always good to undo errors of the past.
WOMAN: Did Washington hold it and look at it?
Valley Forge River, wow!
Is it the oldest transistor radio in existence?
ELVIS COSTELLO: ♪Watchin' the detectives ♪ ♪I get so angry when the teardrops start ♪ ♪But he can't be wounded 'cause he's got no heart ♪ ♪Watchin' the detectives ♪ ♪It's just like watchin' the detectives ♪ I've been a History Detective for 10 years.
I've been answering your questions.
You bring the object, I bring the answer.
Now it's time for the History Detectives to work for me.
I just got into collecting.
Elyse, Wes, they told me that I should do it.
So I began buying vintage posters featuring heroic Africans and African Americans.
Each of my posters has a unique story.
This one, "Our Colored Heroes," what drew me to this particular poster was just the shocking imagery.
It's a World War I poster printed in Chicago in 1918.
I have my own ideas about why this poster was made.
I haven't had time to pursue it myself, but, History Detectives, I want you to tell me why it was made and who made it.
So where is this artifact?
- It's over at the Penn Museum.
- Okay.
Let's go check it out.
So my posters are going to be on exhibition here... - Wow.
- in April 2013.
I've collected posters
regarding African and African Americans in battle.
Wow, nice.
So this is the collection that your recommendation produced.
You really -- you've been doing a good job.
- How many do you have, Tukufu?
- I have 40.
That's the first one you ever bought?
That's the first one.
- I bought it on a shoot.
- On a shoot.
I remember you telling me that.
Let's look at the one we're looking at.
It's very pretty, right?
I mean, it looks like a painting almost.
TUKUFU: It's an odd painting.
I mean, you've got black men stabbing white men, stepping on white men.
This is in 1918, and race relations in America in 1918 are not nice.
Nobody is saying heroic things about African Americans.
"Our Colored Heroes."
This to me is obviously a recruitment poster.
You know, I'm not really so sure it's a recruitment poster.
What do you think it is?
I mean, it doesn't really say "enlist."
It doesn't say to me "come join up."
Well, I'll tell you what's weird for me.
I don't know if you remember, I did a story
on what's called the red hand flag.
- I do remember that story.
- Okay.
So that was about African Americans
fighting in World War I.
During the time, white men did not want to fight
side-by-side with African Americans.
Those African-American soldiers were sent to France
to fight under the French.
So this is weird to me that in our own country,
they would actually make a poster or a print
of an African American, calling him a hero.
You do have a quote on there from General Pershing.
He was the general in charge of the American Expeditionary Forces.
So it says "honored as heroes,"
and it says, "Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts."
Obviously you've looked into this.
What do we know so far?
Well, we know that these two gentlemen did exist and that they did receive this very important honor from the French, which is the Cross of War.
And so this truly was a battle?
This truly happened.
So it says Renesch, Chicago.
I'm assuming you looked into that printing company.
Couldn't find anything.
Although various other Renesch prints exist online, there's no detailed information about the company.
What specifically --
and no one's ever asked you this question before;
you always ask everybody else this question, right?
I know, I know!
So what am I going to say?
What specifically do I want you to find out?
Exactly.
Was this a recruitment poster?
And who made it and why?
Maybe we could split this up, I'm thinking.
Why don't I find out why this poster was made and what it was supposed to be used for, and you take care of the who made it.
Sounds like a plan to me.
If this is a military recruitment poster, it might be mentioned in government archives.
So I asked the office to pull any records for Johnson, Roberts, and this battle, and they made a discovery.
Another history detective is already on the trail, New York Senator Charles Schumer.
He's been preparing a dossier for the award of the Medal of Honor to our guy, Henry Johnson.
And he's seen our poster before.
In our submission to Department of Defense, U.S. Army,
we included this poster.
Now, do you know if this poster was used for recruitment?
I don't.
But the senator does have proof the U.S. government featured Johnson to promote enlistment over 20 years later.
This is a recruitment poster that they used,
and they have Henry Johnson in it.
It says, "Sergeant Henry Johnson, American hero,
World War I, an inspiration to our fighting men today."
The Army used Johnson and his heroism
as a way to recruit black soldiers in World War II.
You've been involved in this battle to get him his due recognition for quite some time.
It's always good to undo errors of the past.
Schumer explains how Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts were members of the 369th Infantry Regiment, known as the Harlem Hell Fighters.
They were the first Americans of any race to be awarded the Croix de Guerre, one of the highest French military honors, but at the time, received no medals from their own country.
The great tragedy in American history is slavery
and then Jim Crow and the discrimination
that existed in the armed forces until after World War II.
When Woodrow Wilson announced war against Germany, stating the world must be safe for democracy, the message resonated with many African Americans.
They saw the war effort as an opportunity to also advance civil rights on the segregated home front.
For Johnson, who faced discrimination back home
and who wasn't allowed to fight alongside white soldiers,
and yet, here he is, risking his life,
what does that say about him?
Can you paint the picture for me of exactly what happened on that night, May 15, 1918?
It was a dark night, and there was a well prepared group
of over 20 German soldiers.
They surprised the Americans.
And Johnson and Needham were sort of in a forward position.
Needham was wounded.
Johnson singlehandedly, with one knife,
he pierced the helmet of an enemy soldier,
and the knife went through his head and knocked him down.
He got rid of a few more with the butt of his rifle.
And he was like a whirlwind of complete bravery.
While this was happening, he was shot at.
He maintained lots of different injuries but didn't stop
until the Germans were retreated
and he got Needham back to the lines.
Henry Johnson's actions deserve the medal of honor.
Let me tell you, if he were white, he would've gotten it.
- Why?
- All of the standards of bravery, valor, saving the lives of others
and risking your life...
He says the communiqué from General Pershing cited on the poster is crucial evidence for the military, who are currently reexamining the case.
They require a chain of command depiction of the valor.
Now here we have General Pershing.
He's the top of the chain of command.
He was head of all the armed forces.
Did the government make this poster?
This is clearly a recruitment poster.
Whether the poster we're looking at here is,
you're going to have to find that out, professor.
Brandeis associate professor Chad Williams is familiar with the government's campaign to rally support for the war.
He's meeting me at Penn Museum.
This is the poster, "Our Colored Heroes."
This is a very -- albeit dramatic -- but an artistic representation of African-American military service on the Western Front.
It would've looked much different.
The landscape would've been completely devastated by years of war, there would've been no trees; much different.
What happened that night was much more gruesome
than this picture would ever dare to depict.
Chad says that somewhat false depiction is not unusual.
Official U.S. government recruiting posters frequently presented a rosy or self-serving image of the war.
Many Americans didn't want to get involved in a European conflict, so the job of winning hearts and minds was given to the Committee on Public Information, or CPI.
Former journalist George Creel was in charge of it,
and it was the propaganda wing of the federal government,
designed to promote the war effort
and the sense of 100% Americanism.
Initially, the CPI was ambivalent about targeting African Americans.
At the earliest stages of the war,
the War Department made a decision
that they were going to restrict
the opportunity for African Americans.
After first allowing volunteers, the government later restricted enlistment to a draft.
Over 1 million African Americans responded, and around 370,000 men were inducted into the Army.
American military wanted to use African Americans
strictly as noncombatants,
envisioned them as being laborers in uniforms.
An image like this would've directly contradicted the government's Jim Crow stance on blacks in the military.
There's no indication, at least on the picture,
that the government produced it.
But on the other hand, it is consistent
with a growing sense of racial pride,
racial consciousness, racial militancy
that is taking place amongst African Americans
during the years of the war.
I think whoever did produce this poster
was trying to engender a sense of racial pride.
It's time to hand this investigation off to Elyse.
How you doing?
She's looking into who made this poster.
Hopefully her who can shed light on my why.
I'm headed to the Society of Illustrators to meet with Vera Grant.
ELYSE: She is an expert on visual iconography.
So I guess my first question to you is who is this printing company?
- E.G... Renesch in Chicago.
- Renesch.
Right.
This printing company, we know that it was only around
for about five years, all right?
We know that Renesch himself is of German heritage.
- Oh, really?
- And -- really.
That's ironic.
Do you know who the artist is?
It's hard to tell who the artist was.
Printers employed a variety of artists to come in
and do their artwork for them.
Whether the artist was African American or not,
that we don't know.
So it's not a government-issued recruitment poster?
The Office of Government Printing at that time
was doing their own printing.
They weren't collaborating with printers
until World War II.
We have a couple of examples here.
All of these posters were printed by Renesch.
He's marketing them to the white communities,
immigrant communities, and the black communities.
So they're sending almost the exact same poster to the whites and the African Americans.
The Renesch Company understood that many African Americans were filled with pride at the symbolism of black soldiers fighting for their country and at the exploits of Johnson and Roberts that night in France.
But I still don't know what our poster was made for until Vera shows me one more thing.
What do you think this poster is?
I'm still thinking this is definitely a recruitment poster.
It just smacks of it.
I tell Tukufu that the poster was not made by the U.S. government.
And so what would you call this poster?
Look at this.
This is an advertisement for our poster here,
"Our Colored Heroes."
It lists this poster along with a few others
marketed to the African-American community.
So it's pure profit.
This is a profit-making venture.
[ chuckles ] How much did it sell for back then?
- Twenty-five cents.
- Twenty-five cents!
Totally interesting.
A white German in America, 1918, doing this poster.
I thought you were going to give me more information about why this was a recruitment poster and I was right and everybody else was wrong!
- But that's not the case.
- Nope.
I have another surprise for you.
Oh, really?
My office discovered that despite the lack of recognition Johnson received while alive, as a veteran, he was qualified to be interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
So tomorrow, someone is going to meet you there.
I am Tara Johnson.
I am the granddaughter of Henry Johnson.
This is my son, DeMarqus.
And I see you're following in his footsteps.
Yes, I served in the Marine Corps for eight years.
We are a family that love our country.
My father was a Tuskegee airman.
My cousin served in Vietnam.
And I have a nephew that's retiring from the armed services this year.
Talk to me about the life of Henry Johnson
when he returned from the war.
He got a parade.
He didn't get any medals from this country.
No other recognition, no benefits.
He couldn't take care of himself or his family.
He died very sad and destitute with injuries that he couldn't live with.
He dies relatively young.
Yes, he does.
All right, so what is this?
What is this you have here?
Now, this is the one that the French gave him.
Yes, sir, the Croix de Guerre.
We have here the Purple Heart.
And this Purple Heart, when did he get this?
Clinton had to give it to him.
Clinton had to give it to him.
So there's an effort to rectify the past.
What would it mean to you
for Henry Johnson to receive the Medal of Honor?
I cannot explain or add words to the heartfelt emotions I would probably have.
He wasn't a glory-seeker.
He had one mission, and that was to bring Needham Roberts, his buddy, his fellow soldier, back.
That's why it's so important that he gets his due.
TUKUFU: For updates on Senator Schumer's effort to have the Medal of Honor awarded to Henry Johnson, visit pbs.org/historydetectives.
EDUARDO: Coming up, an invention that rocked the airwaves, changing the attitude of a whole new generation.
And later, could this business card link a 1930s vice lord to an illicit chapter in L.A. history?
But first...
I'm Ruth Taylor.
I'm the executive director of the Newport Historical Society in Rhode Island.
It has about 10,000 objects documenting Newport history from 1640, literally, until today.
John Austin Stevens was actually a New Yorker who ended up dying in Newport.
His papers were donated to us by his daughter in the 1940s, all kinds of bits and pieces, and then we noticed this obviously older paper.
When we unfolded it, the hair stood up on the back of my neck.
I could see the Schuylkill River labeled, and it became clear that it was a map of Washington's encampment at Valley Forge.
My very first thought was, do people know about this?
Is this what it appears to be?
Well, let's take a look at what you've got here.
I'm pretty excited about this.
Schuylkill River... Take a look over here.
Valley Forge River, wow.
And there's the actual forge right there.
You're telling me that this is the plan of the camp at Valley Forge.
Well, it appears to be.
What do you know about where it came from?
It was found with the John Austin Stevens papers.
He was a descendant of a Continental Army officer.
He became fascinated with the American Revolution.
And how long have you had it?
Well, we've had it since the 1940s,
but apparently we've only known about it
since I found it last summer.
You just found this last summer?
- Yeah.
- Wow.
And the paper, to me, looks like the right kind of paper.
Mm-hmm.
I thought there was something on the back here.
Yeah, it's docketed, too.
"Plan of a battle in the Revolutionary War in which the situation of the armies is shown."
Valley Forge is one of those sort of signal events in American history that we all think about as a big turning point in the war.
We forget that our victory wasn't inevitable.
And the work that happened at Valley Forge
- was really important.
- Yeah.
WES: Contemporaneous maps of the Valley Forge encampment are extremely rare.
Only five are known to exist in the U.S.
Sometimes I get chills in doing these investigations.
This is one of those.
We're hoping that you can authenticate it.
Was this map actually drawn in 1777
when Washington's encampment was at Valley Forge?
Did Washington hold it and look at it?
All right, let's take a look at this map.
When you hold this up to the light, you can see the lines where this was made on a screen.
This kind of paper is called laid paper.
Laid paper is handmade paper.
You can see these folds.
That's because this was meant to be folded and stored in some sort of a tall container.
Often people would write on the back of sheets of paper like this.
This is called docketing.
But this is odd.
It says, "Plan of a battle."
That's pretty curious, because Valley Forge was not a battle.
In fact, while just over 20 miles from the British in Philadelphia, a battle shot was never fired at Valley Forge.
Instead, it was a place for the young Continental Army to lick their wounds after bitter losses at Brandywine and Germantown.
They were basically a ragtag bunch, poorly trained, and it was Washington and his generals' decision that here was a place where we are going to whip the Continental Army into shape.
And over the course of the winter, that's exactly what happened.
Was it actually drawn at the time that Valley Forge was used as the headquarters of the Continental Army?
I want to say yes, but there are just enough things here that sort of puzzle me.
I recognize some of the names here, and they're misspelled, "McDugals" for example.
McDougall didn't spell his name the way it's done here.
"DeCalbs," that's not the way de Kalb's name was spelled.
And it looks very different from other maps I've seen of Valley Forge that were made at the time.
Here's a really interesting map by Louis Duportail.
And Duportail was Washington's chief engineer.
You know, it's much more detailed in terms of the topography.
It shows hills, valleys, and trenches, essential information for an army.
Ruth's map shows little topography besides the river, and there are structures on this map, like Fort Platt, that don't appear on these other maps.
I'm going to ask our office to check with our handwriting expert, John Reznikoff, to see if the writing on the map or the docket matches Washington's or any other known officers at Valley Forge.
But I think my first step is just to see if the details on this map match up with the Valley Forge encampment in 1777.
So I'm on my way to Valley Forge.
I'm going to meet with a guy named Phil Chase.
He's an old friend of mine, but more importantly, for 30 years, this guy was the editor of the "George Washington Papers."
If there's anybody that can tell me about the map, it's Phil.
Okay, wow.
Here's Washington's headquarters in the right spot.
And that's where we are right now.
Phil says Washington's headquarters is not the only thing accurate on the map.
These were the brigades and the divisions that were here at the very beginning and pretty well stayed here through most of the camp.
He points to the note "General Sullivan, General Smallwood Division at Wilmington."
He says that's correct.
While Sullivan was at Valley Forge, his division under the command of Brigadier General William Smallwood was stationed in Delaware that winter.
And Phil notices something else.
It doesn't look like the map is finished.
Although this is made with a lot of skill, it doesn't look like a finished, polished product that was made for the official records or later made as a historical record of the encampment.
I point out some of the other discrepancies that I find troubling: buildings I've never seen at Valley Forge, like Fort Platt.
Phil thinks we need to see the encampment to understand.
This map came from the descendants of Ebenezer Stevens.
- Now, was he here?
- No, he wasn't here.
He was at the Boston Tea Party.
He was at the victory at Saratoga.
He was at the victory at Yorktown.
He was everywhere, but he wasn't at Valley Forge.
How did his family end up with it, then?
Stevens had friends and contacts in the army.
Somebody may have passed it on to him at that time.
As we walk around the five square miles with a copy of Ruth's map, Phil explains what a difficult winter 1777 was.
They got here the 19th of December,
which was very late for establishing a winter camp.
And many of the troops had inadequate clothing.
There weren't initially adequate --
enough tools for them to work with.
And they had to live in tents until they could build
their own log structures.
Poor sanitary conditions brought diseases like typhoid and dysentery, killing over 2,000 soldiers.
This would've been the main parade ground and sort of the center of the entire camp.
WES: And this was the place that the troops
would have been drilling and learning military maneuvers in?
Yeah.
Phil explains that despite the hardship, the men were fervently dedicated to their cause.
The young army worked daily to improve their skills under the instruction of a Prussian commander named Frederick von Steuben, a master at military drilling.
von Steuben along with the Baron de Kalb and Louis Duportail were just a few of the foreign officers in Washington's command.
Their superior skills were a boon to the Continental Army, and the revolution offered Europeans an opportunity for military advancement and money.
So I mean, in some ways then this was a real crucible
for our army to learn how to maneuver
more on the field, right?
Yes, they were more competent and they were better trained when they left.
Phil walks me over to the spot where one of Valley Forge's best known readouts, or defenses, used to be, known as the Star Fort.
This was the first readout that was built,
called Fort Platt on this.
Apparently that was probably an early name.
General McDougall's aide-de-camp, Richard Platt,
was here for about three and a half months
in the early part of the encampment.
So the fact that it's called Fort Platt, does that signify potentially that this map may be fairly early in the history of Valley Forge?
Yeah, it does give a strong indication.
I'm almost convinced this map is from the winter of 1777-78.
But there's something that's been bothering me from the start: the misspelled names.
Why didn't the person who drew this map know how to spell the names of these important generals?
Phil reminds me of the unfinished look of the map.
He thinks that's because it was a working map made by an engineer tasked to build defenses.
Clearly with the emphasis on the readout here
and the lines here and the descriptions of the front line,
their main focus was on finding a way
to defend the encampment.
And that was an ongoing problem with the camp.
But why in the world would a skilled engineer not know how to spell?
Phil tells me that Washington's chief engineer was Louis Duportail, a Frenchman.
The French were the best military engineers
in the world at this time.
And if you were a Frenchman
who had just arrived in this country, and were --
didn't know the language very well,
you might mishear things and spell it
just the way that it sounded to you.
So did Duportail make this map?
Time to check in with the office.
[ phone rings ] Hi, Wes, I just finished Skyping with John Reznikoff, and I learned something very interesting.
Ruth, I knew this was going to be a great story
the minute you showed me this map.
I tell Ruth that when I compare her map to the known layout of Valley Forge in 1777, it largely matches except for some name changes.
Which means that this was probably a planning document
that was used at Valley Forge.
That's amazing.
That's so exciting.
Phil Chase, our Washington expert,
he looked at this map and he said,
"Man, this has the fingerprints of a French engineer."
The head of those French engineers
was a guy named Louis Duportail.
- And you may know that name.
- Yes.
Hi, John, can you tell us what you found out?
Yeah, I've studied this map very carefully,
and I've also studied the examples that you provided me.
While I'm sure the front is not in the hand of Duportail,
I found eight matching points
between Duportail and the docket.
They include things like the way the I is dotted,
the finial loop of the N,
the way the word "which" looks.
And I could go on and on,
and I'm certain I could probably find more.
It's my opinion that the docket was written by Duportail.
WES: Louis Duportail docketed this manuscript.
Wow.
I never would have thought to look at this handwriting.
But there's still one mystery.
Both Phil and I don't know why the docket says plan of Revolutionary battle.
One theory is that "plan of battle" could be the French version of line or order of battle, which refers to the positioning of troops on the ground in preparation for an attack.
There's a lot more research that could be done about this map.
I was just able to sort of scratch the surface.
I think that this map is worth a considerable amount of money,
certainly in the six figures.
I am thrilled with what you all have done, and this is an amazing result.
MAN OVER RADIO: Calling Dick Tracy!
Here is the next thing in size to that wristwatch radio Dick has been sporting in the comic strips.
I'm Joe Bidwell.
I have a small collection of early transistor pocket radios.
The jewel of the collection is this Regency TR-1, which was the first transistor radio ever produced back in 1954.
As part of my collection, I really treasure it because it does represent the beginning of it all.
[ rock 'n' roll music plays ] This particular radio has a very low serial number, so I'm wondering, was it one of the first ever made?
Hi, I'm Tukufu Zuberi, and I'm really excited about doing this story here in Los Angeles.
The transistor radio came around at a really important time.
Rock 'n' roll was coming out.
Parents were not really into the music that children were listening to.
The transistor radio was the invention of personal entertainment.
Well, the first radio I bought myself when I was 12 years old is the Motorola.
So you used to pop this baby in your pocket?
Absolutely, yeah, get on the school bus and have Buddy Holly playing or something like that.
It was very cool.
This is the Regency TR-1, the cream of the crop.
This was the first model of transistor radio ever produced.
And in 1954, this sold for $49.95.
Wow, so that was a pretty penny back then.
A lot of money, yeah.
And there were about 100,000 made.
But Joe tells me that after over 50 years, he doesn't think very many still survive.
It has a very low serial number.
Oh, really?
Inside, under the battery compartment.
- TUKUFU: 2067.
- Right.
It's a low serial number.
What do you want me to find out for you?
Is it the oldest one in existence?
And Joe has a second question.
How was this little company able to turn the world of consumer electronics upside down?
I know that transistors were just starting to be manufactured in 1954.
How did they start making transistor radios?
I don't know that.
Sounds fair enough.
I'll see what I can find out for you
and try to get back to you.
Just stay tuned, man.
All right, so, what have we got going here?
Could I be looking at the oldest surviving transistor radio?
It's sleek, the dial is cool, it has these little red triangles.
I wonder if that's for style or something else.
You've got a little information in here: transistor radio model TR-1.
I have some other numbers over here: 445, 300, 433.
I don't know how to date this radio or even if there are other earlier versions out there.
My office has already told me that Regency changed names in 1989.
And they couldn't track down early records, but they found perhaps the next best thing, a collector who knows everything Regency.
Graphic designer Eric Wrobbel has a radio collection numbering more than 4,000, including some very early Regency models.
I know what that is.
That's a Regency TR-1.
That's the first transistor radio model ever made.
It allowed people to have radios that were their own.
And so radio then came out of the parlor,
where it was a family enterprise,
and into the hands and pockets of individuals,
especially teenagers.
The transistor radio hit at the same moment as another generational earthquake: rock 'n' roll.
Out of range of their parents, teenagers could listen to the new music, like Elvis Presley, who made his radio debut in the summer of 1954 with "That's All Right, Mama."
It helped us teenagers at the time become more alienated
than we would have been otherwise.
So it facilitated the alienation of children.
Yes, of an entire generation.
Ruined the Baby Boom right here.
So why did they make this radio?
It goes back to 1947
when the transistor was invented at Bell Labs.
Eric explains how scientists at AT&T's Bell Labs invented transistors for their phone system to replace fragile vacuum tubes.
With the transistors being many times smaller
than a vacuum tube, it presented an opportunity.
Bell Labs licensed the invention to Texas Instruments, who approached various other consumer electronic companies to manufacture the radio.
But in 1954, not everyone was interested in what Texas Instruments wanted to make.
General Electric, RCA, and the likes of them,
they didn't see the point in a little radio.
They thought, well, it's a novelty item,
they'll sell a few.
They also owned tube factories.
So they were very interested in keeping tubes going.
They weren't motivated.
But one company was, an upstart less than 10 years old called Regency.
Regency was a company that made signal boosters
and things like this.
They felt that if they could make a radio,
a full radio with a speaker in it and everything,
that would fit in a shirt pocket,
that they would sell millions.
While the giants of American industry seemed uninterested, Regency did have competition from a Japanese team which few Americans had heard of.
Which was then known not as Sony
but as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Limited.
But Regency, with nothing else to lose,
went at it full force.
Eric says the scrappy Regency team was under serious pressure.
Texas Instruments wanted the transistor radio on shelves in time for Christmas.
Just four months later, the first TR-1s rolled off the line.
It took Sony until 1957 to bring their pocket transistor radio to the U.S. market.
The salesman for Sony that went to show this radio
at trade shows and to prospective dealers
found that it barely fit, couldn't really fit
into their shirt pockets, and they actually --
Sony had shirts made specially with extra-large shirt pockets
because that was the point.
So you're telling me they beat out Sony?
Yes.
Over 140,000 TR-1s were made in that first run.
Eric thinks less than 10,000 still exist.
Is Joe's the earliest that is still around?
Eric also has a low serial number TR-1, the lowest he knows to exist.
Okay, so mine is 2067, and yours?
- 3407.
- Uh-huh.
So mine was made before yours, but they were probably made around the same time.
Perhaps a week apart.
Eric says that Joe's is the lowest serial number he's ever seen.
But he cautions that the serial number isn't the whole story.
It's important to confirm that the parts are period, too.
Eric has a suggestion on who might be able to help.
The founder, John Pies, has a son
that lives somewhere near me, I'm not sure,
out here in southern California somewhere.
If you can find him...
How about this, Don Pies.
Not only is he the son of the founder of the Regency Electronic Company, but he also followed in his father's footsteps and is a mechanical engineer himself.
Don knows every part of the TR-1 from front to back and has a story for each.
One of the parts that I personally always loved about the Regency radio, I love the brass dial.
It's just beautiful, very simple but very elegant.
This was a very expensive part of the radio to make.
Don says the brass dial is just one part in dating the radio to the TR-1 first run.
This is an interesting dial.
You have these little red points
in between these sequences of three numbers.
- What's going on?
- Sure.
Don explains the triangles represent the darker side of the TR-1.
In the early '50s, we were exposed to the Cold War, and having bomb shelters was a big concern.
FILM NARRATOR: No matter where they go or what they do, they always try to remember what to do if the atom bomb explodes right then.
It's a bomb!
Duck and cover!
So if you had a nuclear event, after you did your duck and cover, you would turn on your radio and you would dial to one of these triangles and try to figure out what the heck's happening.
In a nuclear attack, keep tuned to your local radio station.
It will keep you posted where fallout is taking place.
These civil defense symbols were one of the early marketing strategies that Regency had.
TUKUFU: So the radio fits the profile of an atomic-era invention, but Don needs to open it up to pinpoint its exact creation day.
Under the microscope, Don sees the mark of a very early Regency electrical component known as a capacitor.
Oh, my God, the other end is extremely porous.
I see a greenish color from probably corrosion.
It's completely consistent with the first generation
Regency TR-1s.
They had problems with this one.
They had to replace it early on.
And when I say first generation, within the first few weeks,
definitely in the first month.
Have you ever seen one older than this one?
I haven't physically seen it.
I know of one and I've seen pictures of one.
Oh, really?
Who has it?
The son of Ed Tudor,
who was the president of Regency.
All right, from one son to the next.
This whole thing is becoming a family affair.
I'm now going to talk to the son of the president of Regency.
This is my dad.
The industry was completely caught napping.
My father, Edward C. Tudor, was by training an electrical engineer.
Clay's father was president of Regency during the crucial spring and summer of 1954.
He was always a bit of a risk taker and loved to accept a challenge.
And, Clay says, a man who knew promotion.
What have you got?
This radio has an inscription on the back, and it says... TUKUFU: I'm going to tell you, we talked to collectors and experts on the Regency TR-1, and none of them had seen one as old as yours.
Really?
You're kidding.
This was the oldest one we could find until... Well, my radio was given to me by my father.
It has an inscription on the back.
It says serial number 2.
So you have number 2!
Indeed I do.
"Presented to Edward C. Tudor in recognition of your leadership during the development and production of the world's first transistor radio, October 28, 1954."
So yours is number 2.
It's the mama bear.
So how does it make you feel to have number 2?
Well, I'd like to have had number 1, but my father, being the astute marketer that he was, realized that he needed to present the first transistor radio to the head of Texas Instruments.
Really?
So we got our answers from the people who were related to those who were responsible for building the radio.
That's amazing, all of those connections.
No kidding.
I think it's exciting to know that this was a part of history.
And this is obviously a key part in personal entertainment.
It's not only a key part, it's transformative.
It's nice to have a piece of history.
EDUARDO: And now, in an encore presentation... a retired doctor has a business card he thinks could link his father to a 1930s vice lord and an illicit chapter in Los Angeles history.
I've always wondered about the Club Continental and what my dad did there.
I'm Eduardo Pagan.
I first met Richard Nicolls in 2011 on the beautiful Guemes Island in the Puget Sound.
I've got this card from my dad, Fred Nicolls,
showing that he worked at the Club Continental.
Richard says his father passed away in 1957 and didn't speak of his somewhat checkered past.
We weren't too close.
I learned as a young man
that he was a rumrunner across the Mexican border.
So he was a bootlegger.
And he got caught and went to prison.
After World War II, the governor of California
gave him a full pardon.
What can you tell me about the Club Continental?
Richard believes the Club Continental was a nightclub near Los Angeles in the 1930s.
Although he never saw his father much as a young boy, he does recall a rare visit to the club that left a lasting impression.
One time he took me downstairs,
and there was this sumptuous casino:
roulette wheels and baccarat tables
and card tables and, you know, the whole works.
And what did your father do there?
I don't know, it a little bit runs together in my mind
because I was so young.
But one shadowy figure still looms large in his imagination, a man he believes was named Nola Hahn.
Nola Hahn?
Sort of an odd name for a man, I thought.
What would you like me to find out for you?
What was my dad's involvement in the Club Continental,
and then who was Nola Hahn?
Okay.
At the Los Angeles Central Library, reference librarian Mary McCoy helps me locate Club Continental in a Los Angeles phone book from 1935.
C...L...U -- there it is.
There's Club Continental, Sonora Avenue, Gla, - Glendale, right?
- Mm-hmm.
There's a Kenwood exchange rather than Omaha.
That's not what we have here.
Maybe the number on the card was for Fred's home line.
But the phone book doesn't have a listing for Fred Nicolls.
In a newspaper database, I find a reference to the club from 1935.
It reads in part, "Amid a brilliant assemblage, the Club Continental held its formal opening last night in an atmosphere of splendor.
Stars of screen and stage were on hand to make the occasion a gala affair."
And this is a year and a half after the end of prohibition.
It looks like the club's one and only location was near a Glendale airport.
During the war, the club became an officers' barracks.
The building was demolished in 1966.
There's no mention of Nola Hahn or gambling activity, so what was it that Richard remembered seeing in that basement?
There's nothing on Richard's father, Fred Nicolls, at the Club Continental either.
What about his earlier rum-running days?
Now, Richard remembered that his father was arrested in Arizona.
"Customs men said they found copper containers fitted between the seats and in the floor of the car, containing 250 gallons of bottled whisky, labeled 'Edinburgh, Scotland.'"
In 1931, Nicolls was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
So Fred Nicolls had a criminal past, but did he reform his ways after his release?
What exactly was going on at the Club Continental?
Willie Wilkerson is the son of the legendary Billy Wilkerson, who ran nightclubs in Los Angeles during Prohibition and after repeal, when gambling became the gangsters' revenue stream.
Our contributor's father --
his name is right there on the card --
used to work for Nola Hahn.
What can you tell me about him?
Well, I know Nola Hahn, and Nola Hahn definitely ran the Club Continental, at least the gambling, and he definitely ran the gambling for my father's establishments.
Why did your father hire someone like Nola Hahn?
What did he bring to your father?
Hollywood was Las Vegas before Las Vegas was Las Vegas.
I mean, it was dotted with casinos down Sunset Boulevard.
Some of these clubs in today's money made hundreds of millions.
Nola Hahn was kind of like a magician, a wizard in casino gambling.
And this guy knew how to make a casino just disappear if there was some kind of a police raid.
Willie explains Hahn's innovations included consolidating gambling tables around a single overseer to avoid cheating and positioning surveillance teams to monitor the gamblers.
We know this person to be the pit boss today.
Yeah, yeah.
Was all of the kind of stuff you're describing
going on at the Club Continental?
Absolutely.
This club was an immense success during its time, and that can be directly attributed to Nola Hahn.
How long was Hahn associated with the Club Continental?
Well, that I don't know exactly, but he bought the Trocadero from my dad in 1938, and it was extraordinarily bad luck for him.
The reformers moved in and shut down gambling and prostitution.
That clean-up campaign was pretty definitive.
It put a lot of these guys out of business.
Willie says after 1938, mobsters looked for a new place to set up shop.
Some, like Hahn, saw potential in an isolated, low-rent desert town: Las Vegas.
In 1942, years before Bugsy Siegel and the Flamingo, Hahn opened the lavish Colony Restaurant.
His gambling innovations went with him, and this time it was all legal.
He created the template of modern gambling that we know today.
Well, what kind of guys worked for Hahn?
Well, these guys weren't plucked from the street; they had to have some kind of resume.
As you notice, on Mr. Nicolls' card, it doesn't identify what he does.
Right!
Do you think Fred Nicolls went along with Nola Hahn to Vegas?
My guess is Mr. Nicolls went along for the ride as long as Nola Hahn was doing any kind of business.
Did Fred Nicolls follow Nola Hahn to the promised land of Las Vegas?
In the shady world these men were living in, it's hard to find records.
But I have a thought.
Fred Nicolls spent time in prison, and Richard mentioned his father was eventually pardoned years later by the governor of California.
Legal expert P.S.
Ruckman has helped the History Detectives in the past.
I forwarded Fred Nicolls' information, and he suggests we meet in Seattle at its National Archives and Records Administration facility.
This is Fred Nicolls, and we believe he worked for the Club Continental.
Now, I've been able to find only two articles that mention an arrest and then a conviction in 1931 for bootlegging.
The family remembers or believes that he was pardoned by a governor for bootlegging.
They would be mistaken with respect to that.
He violated the Volstead Act,
also known as the National Prohibition Act,
so his offense was federal.
And so Mr. Nicolls actually spent time in federal prison.
P.S.
found Nicolls' pardon application file.
Here is a copy of his actual presidential pardon.
Pres-- wait a minute, presidential pardon?
That's right, Harry Truman granted this pardon
to Mr. Nicolls.
Oh, this is fantastic.
And there his signature is, Harry S. Truman.
P.S.
explains that only a president could grant a pardon for a federal offense.
Nicolls applied for the pardon in 1944, stating that he wanted to participate in the war effort.
After the application is received,
then there's an extensive background research,
again, conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
And they interviewed several people
throughout the state of California,
and here we see some affidavits
which name some of those individuals
and tell you about their relationship to Fred Nicolls.
Well, Richard, this has been a very fascinating investigation.
I explain how the Club Continental of his childhood had been one of the major emporiums of illegal gambling in Los Angeles, and Nola Hahn was an engineer of modern gambling and a founding father of Las Vegas.
A gambling engineer.
He was, he was a gambling genius.
[ laughs ] Now, what's rather interesting
is that Nola Hahn becomes the key
to my answering the last question,
which was basically what was your father's association
with the Club Continental and all of this underworld
that existed in Los Angeles during this time?
I show Richard the FBI's record of his father's employers.
I want you to take a look at 1934.
We see Los Angeles, California, in 1934.
There's Nola Hahn right there, Club Continental.
I can't believe that.
So Nola Hahn, a known figure in the L.A. underworld, was serving as a character reference for Fred Nicolls.
The background check says Nicolls worked at the Club Continental for three months, and it lists his job description.
I do find it very interesting that he's listed here as a purchasing agent; that is highly suggestive.
And also the more amorphous title "steward."
What do you think that meant?
Unfortunately, all I can do is add to the level of mystery.
Further down the affidavit toward the end,
it says the records have "evidently been destroyed."
But the application does answer one question.
In 1938, when Hahn left for Vegas, Fred Nicolls started a five-year job at a Los Angeles furniture company.
Nicolls apparently didn't follow the mobsters to Las Vegas, and the Club Continental may have been the last time he worked for Nola Hahn.
Nola Hahn.
(laughs) That is fantastic.
And there it is, Continental Club.
Purchasing agent and steward.
It really was because of this FBI investigation then
that your father was able to then petition
the president of the United States for a pardon.
And he wrote that,
"I do hereby grant unto the said Fred Nicolls
a full and unconditional pardon."
And there's his signature right there, Harry S. Truman.
Thank you.
Well, you're very welcome.
I'll really treasure these.
Hmm.
Well, that was worthwhile.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you.
Happy to do this.