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Reinhard Brothers Company
By Greg Farmer
Did this Minnesota radio manufacturer influence Atwater Kent?
In 1902, Mr. A.C. Reinhard, C.T. Stevens, and V.P. Hollis formed the Hollis Electric Company. They did well, doing all sorts of electrical contracting, installing electric motors, and performing electrical repairs. The company grew and new employees included Reinhard's brother, H.H. Reinhard, and his father, P.T. Reinhard. They eventually bought out Hollis and by 1912 changed the company's name to Reinhard Brothers Company.
The company transitioned from electrical work to wholesaling automotive supplies and by the 1920s they occupied a large four story building at 11-13-15-17 South 9th Street in downtown Minneapolis, where they stayed until 1955. This building is still standing there today and hasn't changed much in the past 100 years.
Atwater Kent was a leading manufacturer of automotive ignition parts and Reinhard Brothers was their exclusive distributor in Minnesota and the surrounding area. In the 1920s Reinhard began diversifying into other areas such as home appliances, paints, floor coverings, and heating and pumping equipment. So when Atwater Kent began producing radio components in early 1922, Reinhard distributed those too. These were high quality radio components made with the same thick bakelite that Atwater Kent used for their ignition parts. Some of their early parts were a No. 3752 Coupled Circuit Tuner, a No. 3676 TA Detector and 1 Stage Amplifier unit, a No. 3812 TA Detector and 2 Stage Amplifier unit, and a No. 3714 Mounted Variometer.
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Reinhard Brothers published a 'Radio Call Book Directory', not dated but certainly in 1922, that includes a list of radio stations in the United States and Canada, Radio Laws and Regulations of the United States, a two-page article titled 'What to Expect From Your Receiver', and advertisements for their line of radio supplies, including Kennedy Type 281, 110, and 220 receivers (all introduced in 1921) with their matching amplifiers, a Western Electric 7A amplifier, and the various Atwater Kent units.
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But most interesting is Reinhard Brother's ad for an Atwater Kent Single Circuit Receiver with Detector and one stage Amplification, mounted on a bakelite base and including a separate Table Mounted Enclosed 43-Plate Condenser.
Someone at Reinhard had decided to use their Atwater Kent parts to build and sell complete radios. So the question is, did this Reinhard Receiver inspire Atwater Kent to market complete radios with a similar design?
Reinhard's “Atwater Kent” receiver was likely built right there in the Reinhard building. It definitely was not assembled onto a bakelite base by Atwater Kent. Atwater Kent introduced their first assembled “breadboard” radios, the No. 3925 and 3945, in November 1922 with the parts mounted on a wooden board and using the same circuits as the Reinhard two and three tube sets. The Reinhard Call Book Directory may have been printed before these were released since they do not appear in it. It is unfortunate that the Call Book Directory is not dated.
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Sometime after January 24, 1923, Reinhard published another booklet titled 'Radio Catalog No. 2' which offered a large assortment of radios, radio parts, and other radio accessories for sale. It again offered the same Reinhard-built Atwater Kent Single Circuit Receiver as in the Call Book, but ALSO advertised six different complete Atwater Kent manufactured breadboard radios with wooden boards. These were Atwater Kent's No. 3925, 3945, 3955, 3960, 4052, and 4066 models. The 4066 was Atwater Kent's newest model at the time and had been released on January 24, 1923, so this catalog was printed after that date, proving that Reinhard continued advertising their assembled bakelite board radios at least several months after Atwater Kent began selling theirs.
Researching the Reinhard radios, I saw the Pavek Museum's two-tube set plus two other two-tube sets owned by NARC members, and fellow NARC member Jim Thompson gave me a photocopy of the Reinhard Call Book ad. I corresponded with collectors on the east coast who had examples and with Ray Thompson who is an expert on Atwater Kent parts, and over the years also examined a couple more being sold on eBay. More recently I found original copies of the two Reinhard booklets which were very helpful and also found old articles about the company at newspapers.com.
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The sets that I've seen are all slightly different from each other in various ways, with 1 or 2 stage TA units in several variations, with and without the homemade-looking black fine-tuning knob at the 9 o'clock position on the Coupled Circuit Tuner, with and without visible brass rivets securing the 5 rubber feet, with black, nickeled or brass terminal posts, with variations in the words engraved into the bakelite board, and two with noticeably thinner bakelite boards. All of the mentioned variations likely were built and sold by Reinhard Brothers and are simply production variations due to minor design updates or parts availability, although in some cases defective no-longer-available parts may have been replaced with newer equivalent parts.
I do need to mention that three reproduction Reinhard sets were sold with the Carl Knipfel collection at Estes Auction in 2003. These had new bakelite boards with aluminum colored cast metal feet. If you have questions about a Reinhard radio's authenticity, I might be able to help.
Shown on the previous page is a Reinhard set that I bought in 2005 at the Oronoco Goldrush in southern Minnesota. The thick shiny black bakelite board is engraved to identify each terminal post (nickeled with black thumbscrews) and it has 5 black conical rubber feet held on by visible brass rivets. It also has very early versions of the components, specifically the No. 3752 Coupled Circuit Tuner (far left) and No. 3714 Mounted Variometer (middle) do not have numbers molded onto the back side of their panels and their tags say 'Patent Pending' rather than 'Patents Pending', as on later units. The bakelite plate on the Coupled Circuit Tuner also does not have the brass fine-tuning knob that Atwater Kent added on later units. The No. 3812 TA Detector and 2 Stage Amplifier unit (far right) has two terminals labeled 'TIC', for tickler, while on later versions these were labeled P1 and P2. The black rheostat knob only appeared on early units designed for 1-amp filament tubes. This is the same TA unit variation (of 7 variations known to have been made) that Atwater Kent used on their first assembled breadboard radios.
There is no manufacturer's name on the radio and the circuit is identical to the Atwater Kent No. 3945 advertised in the Reinhard ad, except the Mounted Variometer was added to make this set regenerative.
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The above Reinhard set is slightly different from the one on the previous page. It somewhat concerns me that the bakelite board is about half as thick and must be handled carefully since it flexes under the weight of the TA unit. The TA unit is the next newer version with the tickler terminals labeled P1 and P2, and the board's terminal posts are brass. But perhaps the most obvious difference is the black fine-tuning knob at the 9 o'clock position on the Coupled Circuit Tuner. A side view of this knob is also shown.
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The fine-tuning knob arrangement looks homemade but it is identical to the one on the Pavek Museum's example and it looks like the knob illustrated in the Reinhard ads. Note that the ad also shows a factory-made Atwater Kent breadboard radio with an unmodified Coupled Circuit Tuner without a fine-tuning knob. It appears the black knob was installed by Reinhard as an option on their receivers, and some have speculated that Atwater Kent may have copied this idea when later Coupled Circuit Tuners and other Atwater Kent components included fine-tuning knobs. Atwater Kent's fine-tuning knobs were high quality, made of brass, more securely mounted, and mounted lower along the main dial, but did Atwater Kent get the basic idea for these from Reinhard Brothers? We might never know.
Sources:
The Minneapolis Star, 13 Jan 1948 page 17 “Reinhard Brothers Buy Former J.R. Clark Site”, newspapers.com
Radio Station Call Book Directory, Reinhard Brothers Company, Inc., Minneapolis, Minn.
Radio Catalog No. 2, Reinhard Brothers Company, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Radio Age, The Newsletter of the Mid-Atlantic Antique Radio Club articles by Ray Thompson and Leigh Bassett:
“Atwater Kent Variometers, Variocouplers, and Related Devices”, December 2005
“Atwater Kent: The Two-Tube Detector/Amplifiers”, August 2007
Atwater Kent, The Man, the Manufacturer and His Radios, by Ralph Williams, John P. Wolkonowicz, and edited by Donald Patterson, 2002
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