f j & pw

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FJ had started a wireless supplement in Hobbies Weekly, which he edited. His knowledge of engineering in general was very wide (for more on his life, click on 'F.J. CAMM' in the left navigation) but he did face competition, most notably from 'Popular Wireless', where the main contributor for constructional articles was John Scott Taggart. To say that the magazine boasted about the prowess of Taggart would be an understatement. The heavy page-by-page exposure of the designer, whenever a new receiver of his hit the pages, was tantamount to overkill. 

It must have annoyed Camm, who preferred to let his designs speak for themselves but by November, 1935, something of a volte-face occurred. Perhaps he thought it was time to fight fire with fire, or then again, perhaps his publishers demanded he fought back. Whatever the case, FJ's face looked out from the cover of Practical Wireless for 16th November, centred on a banner boldly proclaiming 'the best set for 1936'. The receiver in question was his £4 superhet four. Inside the magazine - with its free blueprint - he produced a long and rather fearsome invective in which he he stated 'We have consistently been flattered by imitation - often copied but never equalled... We LEAD and SHOW the WAY... this new receiver... has selectivity vastly superior to the ordinary superhet'.  Further in, there are several pages devoted to the set, and he says 'This stupendous achievement... as it would appear unseemly (!) for me to praise my own work*, I have a natural diffidence in describing my own sets. I have been accused in the past of being too modest in my claims, and it has been pointed out to me by members of the trade that even my very large following amongst home constructors would have been considerably enhanced had I indulged in the extravagance of language employed by so many other designers... I refer to ballyhoo... he then claims to let his designs speak for themselves, rather than convert himself into 'a passable imitation of a circus showman'.

He goes on in this vein for the best part of two pages before getting into the actual constructional details of the set. 

Who, we may wish to speculate, was he referring to when he spoke of mock auctioneers, embellishing superlatives, acrobats describing ever more complex somersaults? Could it be that first in line might have been the aforementioned John Scott Taggart? Earlier, in PW, September 22nd, 1934, he wrote about a different set of his design that it '...contains no stunt knob introduced merely as a stunt...'

Certainly, 'Popular Wireless' made much of Taggart, their star designer. I think it is a case of 'love or loathe' when it comes to the latter's output, which was individual in design and appearance, to say the least: flat baseboard construction when Practical Wireless - and FJ - were championing metallised wooden chassis and metal chassis, the latter having been industry norm for years previously. There is little doubt that FJ's designs were modelled upon commercial lines, often simplified to help the novice constructor, whereas Scott Taggart stayed aloof from commercial product and went his own distinctive - and some may think, perhaps rather blind-alleyed - way. Whatever the case, after Popular Wireless ceased publication a couple of years before WWII, Scott Taggart seems to have produced no more designs and his contributions to magazine content became rarer and tended toward radio theory rather than practical construction. FJ Camm went on right through the war years with Practical Wireless, albeit in an emasculated form due to the exigencies of wartime Britain. He continued as editor PW and several other practical type magazines until his untimely death.

*Which is, of course, exactly what he proceeded to do.

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