Foxhole radio

Foxhole Radio (work in progress) | 2023

Following on from my work with Megan Calver at Durlston Country Park, a location that played a key role in the development of radio communications, I've become interested in making the simplest possible radio receiver. And this is it. No battery, no amplifier, no real tuner ... just some copper wire, a razor blade, a safety pin, a pencil lead and an earphone. (It also needs to be connected up to an aerial and an earth.)

Different versions of this receiver were built by soldiers during World War Two. Traditional radios could be traced by the enemy, so soldiers built crude radios (using blued or rusted razor blades as diodes), which were capable of receiving AM (amplitude modulated) transmissions. There are relatively few AM broadcasts these days, but it feels like some kind of magic even to hear static on it.