by Susan Martin, Processing Archivist & EAD Coordinator

Have you ever wondered about the origins of the everyday technological devices that we take for granted today? How far back do these devices go? What did some of their earliest incarnations look like?

The newly processed papers of Charles Francis Adams give us an idea. You may recognize his name, but no, I’m not talking about the ambassador to the U.K. during the Civil War (CFA 1807-1886), the railroad executive and historian (CFA 1835-1915), or the Secretary of the Navy and yachtsman (CFA 1866-1954). He was, however, a member of the same illustrious family and a direct descendant of Presidents John and John Quincy Adams.

Our Charles Francis Adams (1910-1999) was, among other things, a Navy veteran, vice president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and executive at Raytheon for many years. It’s this last role I’d like to highlight in this post. Raytheon, founded in 1922, has been headquartered in Cambridge, Newton, Lexington, and Waltham, Mass. Between 1947 and 1975, Adams served alternately as vice president, president, and chairman of the company.

Adams’ papers include 15 scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, photographs, and ephemera going back to 1920 that document much of the history of Raytheon. Adams’ tenure coincided with a period of explosive technological innovation, and while the company has become one of the country’s foremost military contractors, it was also involved in the development of a variety of commercial technological gadgets and home appliances in the post-World War II years. I want to focus on three devices: the microwave oven, the television, and the walkie-talkie.

On 20 May 1947, the Hotel Statler in Boston (now the Park Plaza Hotel) debuted a new appliance manufactured by Raytheon—the “Radarange.” It was about five feet high, stainless steel, and used a magnetron tube for cooking meals in a matter of seconds. That evening, an entire meal was prepared with this “radar cooking,” including “radar coffee.” According to a Boston Post article published the following day, “The Hotel Statler made epicurean history last night. […] It was the first time this has been done anywhere.”

The scrapbooks include some fun promotional photographs featuring the Radarange at the Statler and other Massachusetts locations, like the Aero Snack Bar, a lunch counter at the Norwood airport; White Tower Restaurant in Brookline Village; and United Farmers Dairy Store in Dorchester.

One article estimates that there were about 75 Radarange units in operation by early 1948, mostly in hotels and restaurants. The appliances were not sold, but leased to customers for $150 a month. They were also intended for trains, ships, and even planes. Radaranges were not ready for everyday home use yet—for one thing, they were too expensive to make and to service—but Adams saw the potential in the domestic market, and by the mid-1950s, the company was developing a smaller model for direct sale.

The chairman of the board of Hotels Statler Co., quoted in a press release, said that the Radarange “has a definite place in the preparation of quality food in quantity production. The cooking is not only fast, it is clean—there is no grease, smoke or odor. Our chefs, furthermore, are delighted because ‘Radarange’ produces no external heat, making the kitchen a more comfortable place in which to work.”

What was the public’s reaction to this new-fangled contraption? Tide magazine, a publication covering advertising, marketing, and public relations news, said the Radarange was the “most intriguing” of Raytheon’s new products (30 Jan. 1948). A reviewer, early the following year, called it a “spooky invention,” but was otherwise positive about it. Christian Science Monitor summed it up this way: “At first there was some opposition to radar ranges because of the revolutionary changes in cooking methods implicit in them. Some cooks were impatient of the new techniques and others expected too much” (1 Apr. 1954).

I, for one, love the idea of diners at a high-end restaurant ordering a microwave meal. In fact, the Statler reserved a special section on its daily menu for food prepared via Radarange.

Television, on the other hand, had been around for a little while before Raytheon got in on the game. The company’s foray into the TV market wouldn’t last, but in the late 1940s, Raytheon and its subsidiary Belmont Radio Corporation were hyping their new model with features like a clearer picture, static-free sound, and a “snap-action station selector” (the channel dial, I assume). Prices of televisions advertised in Adams’ scrapbooks ranged from $200-$750. A store in Boston called the House of Television was selling a set that came in a mahogany cabinet with a AM/FM radio and a record player. It also boasted a “giant” circular screen…about 8.8 inches in diameter.

Last but definitely not least, I stumbled across these terrific clippings from the Quincy Patriot Ledger and the Boston Globe dated 4 Feb. 1952.They showcase Raytheon’s new “handie-talkie” radio, “the lightest and most compact hand radio receiver-transmitter ever developed,” weighing in at a mere 6 ½ pounds and larger than a woman’s head.

This radio, officially named the AN/PRC-6, was already proving useful to American troops in Korea. It could be submerged in water and withstand extreme temperatures, had a greater range and far more available frequencies than the previous version, and the 3 ½-pound battery lasted about 100 hours. As for its size, well, it was definitely an improvement over the 11-pound World War II “handie-talkie.” One writer astutely observed that this model was part of “the continuing miniaturization of communications equipment.” Imagine what they’d say about today’s hand-held devices.

All of the excerpts and images in this post were taken from the Charles Francis Adams scrapbooks here at the MHS. Click on any of the images above to see them larger. Or better yet, visit our library and take a look at the originals.

by Doug Girardot, Adams Papers Intern

In June, I began my internship with the Adams Papers editorial project at the MHS and started working on the Diary of John Quincy Adams, led by the wonderful Neal Millikan.

There was just one problem: I didn’t care about John Quincy Adams. What’s more, I knew almost nothing about him, apart from the fact that he was John Adams’s son and served as president.

As it turns out, your perceptions of someone change a lot when you read dozens upon dozens of pages from their personal diary. After transcribing and proofreading several months’ worth of his writings and doing web encoding for over a year of entries, I ended up getting to know quite a bit about the ins and outs of John Quincy Adams. Three months or so later, I think JQA, as we affectionately abbreviate him in the Adams Papers, is one of the most fascinating figures in American history.

JQA kept a behemoth of a personal record: his diary comprises fifty-one volumes, which he wrote over the course of 68 years beginning when he was twelve years old. They provide an unparalleled window onto the period between the nation’s founding in the last quarter of the 1700s and the time when a distinct national identity of the United States began to coalesce by the mid-1800s.

Despite the Homeric scale of his diaries, their small details are even more interesting than the grand geopolitical narratives which they convey.

His writings about religion are fascinating, and it’s amazing to glance into what religion looked like in the adolescent years of an independent America. Every Sunday, JQA quoted the readings from church and summarized the preacher’s sermon. Then, he bluntly—and often ruthlessly—critiqued the homilist’s eloquence and speaking style before proceeding to give his judgement on the theological contents and coherence of the sermon itself. About Rev. William Newell, minister of the First Parish of Cambridge, JQA wrote:

“His discourses are sensible and moral, but neither brilliant nor profound. The theological school at Cambridge, is yearly producing several such clergymen, and they are introducing a uniformity of composition and delivery, superior to those of their predecessors of the last age, but which leaves a desire for more variety at least of manner—” (28 August 1836)

Good reviews from JQA—something like the Roger Ebert of his time for religious services—were few and far between.

And while it is intellectually interesting to read about his solemn take on religion, it is outright fun to read words crafted in his decidedly less pious side. Peppered throughout his diary are insults which only a well-traveled, bookish, Harvard-educated, diplomat-turned-president-turned-legislator could concoct. Take this passage from his time in Congress, in which he gracefully provided his thoughts on prospective presidential candidates for the election of 1844:

“Buchanan is the shadow of a shade and General Scott is a Daguerrotype likeness of a candidate—all sunshine, through a camera obscura. . . . M’Lean, is but a second edition of John Tyler—vitally democratic, double-dealing and hypocritical—” (3 April 1843)

While at first it can be challenging to connect with someone from around two hundred years ago, for whom daguerreotype was modern technology, a further look provides glimpses of timeless humanity that makes JQA resemble what he really was—a person.

This comes through in his reflections on the quotidian tasks of keeping up with his correspondence, diary, and speeches, all of which he spent countless hours composing in addition to his regular duties as a statesman. Though JQA may have been a prolific and erudite writer, it didn’t come easily. Many a student in the midst of a paper can relate to his comments regarding backlogged diary entries which he was working on:

“Had I spent upon any work of Science or Literature, the time employed upon this Diary, it might perhaps have been permanently useful to my Children and my Country— I have devoted too much time to it— My physical powers sink under it—” (20 March 1821)

More than simply an austere historical figure, JQA strikes me in his writing as a genuinely good person, striving to do what was right. Toward the end of his life, he undertook the writing of a speech to advocate for the abolition of slavery. While it was a daunting and exhausting project, JQA pressed on, determined

“to leave behind me something which may keep alive the flame of liberty and preserve it in that conflict between Slavery and freedom which is drawing to its crisis and which is to brighten, or to darken the condition of the human race upon earth—” (11 April 1843)

Keeping up with his writing might have been a constant source of pressure for JQA, but I am certainly grateful that he did it anyway. Without these invaluable records, he might well have remained just another name in a textbook for me. Fortunately, interning at the MHS has furnished me the opportunity to discover the vibrant, devoted, intelligent, sometimes curmudgeonly, but always loveable character that he was.

by Hobson Woodward, Series Editor, Adams Family Correspondence

Volume 14 of the Adams Family Correspondence, published by Harvard University Press, arrived in the Adams Papers offices last month. Spanning the period October 1799 through February 1801, the volume chronicles the final months of Abigail and John Adams’s public service. Among the 277 documents included in the book is one that records a “curious conversation” between Abigail and the family’s former friend and political rival, Thomas Jefferson. The conversation took place at a dinner party in January 1801. A month earlier, presidential electors had cast their ballots. While the official election results would not be announced until 11 February, John Adams’s loss was already widely presumed. Ultimately, it was the House of Representatives that determined the outcome of the election of 1800, casting 36 ballots before breaking the electoral tie between Jefferson and Aaron Burr on 17 February. Thus, the tension of the moment makes the conversation between Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson all the more extraordinary.

Abigail enclosed her transcript of the conversation with a 25 January 1801 letter to her son Thomas Boylston, telling him that it “was not heard by any one but ourselves, as we spoke low.” The enclosure relates an impressive exchange on Washington politics, where the president’s wife and one of the contenders for his replacement offered their impressions of a partisan Congress and ruminated on the characters of particular members. The give-and-take was frank, unrestrained. Thomas Jefferson said he avoided attending the House of Representatives, writing, “I am sure there are persons there who would take a pleasure in saying something, purposely to affront me.” Abigail Adams was equally candid, noting, “Some are mere Brutes, others are Gentlemen— but party Spirit, is a blind spirit.”

The conversation then turned to the Senate’s debate over the ratification of the Convention of 1800, an agreement that ended the Quasi-War and resulted from John Adams’s decision to send a second peace mission to France. Thomas Jefferson believed the Senate would not give its advice and consent, a position that surprised Abigail Adams given that mercantile interests favored ratification. If defeat did occur, Abigail claimed the fault would lay with Federalists allied with Alexander Hamilton, who had opposed the president’s diplomatic efforts. “There have always been a party determined to defeat it from the first sending the Mission,” Abigail said, adding, “I Mean the Hamiltonians; they must abide the concequences.”

The conversation came to a close when the vice president attempted to broach the subject of what the House would do about the deadlocked presidential election. There, the First Lady declined to respond. The election “is a subject which I do not chuse to converse upon,” Abigail claimed. Instead, she offered a telling anecdote:

I have heard of a Clergyman who upon some difficulty amongst his people, took a text from these words—“and they knew not what to do”—from whence he drew this      inference, [“]that when a people were in such a Situation, that they do not know what         to do; they should take great care that they do not do—they know not what.”

To that, Abigail wrote, “he laught out, and here ended the conversation.”

Future volumes of Adams Family Correspondence will include letters between Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson both before and after the breach in their relationship that lasted from 1804 to 1813. The letters provide fascinating insight into the friendship between the Adamses and Jefferson, though none reveal quite the same rapport as Abigail did when she took up her quill to transcribe her “curious conversation” with Thomas Jefferson.

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Packard Humanities Institute. The Florence Gould Foundation and a number of private donors also contribute critical support. All Adams Papers volumes are published by Harvard University Press.