Elmer was born in Scotts Mills, Oregon on October 6, 1899, the son of Wilbert and Minnie Osterhoudt. Wilbert (also known as William) was a carpenter, cabinet and furniture maker. Elmer had a brother named Cyril, who was born on April 17, 1901. The family lived on the farm of Charles Higby Osterhoudt, Wilbert's father. Also on the farm were two of Wilbert's brothers, Henry and John.

Note: To be more precise, Elmer and Cyril were born in Butte Creek, Oregon. Butte Creek was incorporated into Scotts Mills in 1916. They were apparently born on their grandfather's farm and not in the town of Scotts Mills itself. The population of Scotts Mills at the time was about 100.

For reasons not known, the family moved to Yakima, Washington. Charles died there in April of 1903. Minnie Osterhoudt died in September 1903 at the age of 27. A lone newspaper article hints that Elmer and Cyril had a three month old brother named Clarence who died two weeks after their mother died (see page 10). Cyril was sent to live with Wilbert's sister Nellie McConnell in Clackamas, Oregon. Elmer stayed with his father, who moved to Eugene, Oregon, where Wilbert's brother John lived with his wife, Lillie Shields. According to Elmer (MRL Data Sheets Vol. 6) his father owned a planing mill there. (A planing mill takes boards from a saw mill and turns them into finished lumber.) Actually, Wilbert didn't own the mill outright, he had a partner named Jim Smith.

The 1910 census shows that Wilbert and Elmer lived at 205 8th Avenue in Eugene. The mill was also on 8th Avenue, but a few blocks towards the Williamette River near Skinners Butte, where the mill race met Eighth Avenue. Accordingly, it was named "Eighth Avenue Planing Mill."

Note: The designations "Street" and "Avenue" are used interchangeably in old Eugene newspaper articles and maps, so the mill was also known as "Eighth Street Planing Mill."

Cyril was reunited with his father and Elmer sometime between 1910 and 1912. An article in the Eugene Guardian states that Wilbert had married Lela May Osterhoudt (maiden name unknown) in 1911. Lela May filed for divorce in June of 1914 and the divorce was granted on August 18, 1914.

In 1912, when Elmer was 13 years old and living in Eugene, he traded in three empty beer bottles for the deposit and bought a 10¢ book named "The Star Toymaker." Using the plans from this book, Elmer and Cyril built a tin talking machine, bird houses, motors, waterwheels, stilts, telegraph sounders, electric bells and dry cells. They would also go to garages and acquire discarded dry cells from Model T Fords to power their projects. At one time they had about 100 of them connected together in series for "a sparking good time." When the cells became depleted they figured out how to chemically rejuvenate them using a saturated solution of Sal Ammoniac.

They also used the cells to set off their cannon, which was made of a foot long pipe 1" in diameter, mounted on a 2" x 6" board. One end was closed off with a big bolt and had a slot sawed into it to hold the end of a lamp cord. They charged it with Potash and Sulfur and sent an electric current through the lamp cord. According to Elmer, they once stuck the handle from an old umbrella into it, and it was blown out with enough force to drive it through a wooden box.

Handbook 8, Radio Kinks and Quips, contains the following three sentences: "At home, my brother and I used to drive our poor Dad nuts. We had an Edison Cylinder record phonograph. We used to reverse the belt and run it backwards."

Accounts of how to make a canon out of a 1" gas pipe, how to rejuvenate dry cells with Sal Ammoniac, how to reverse the belt on an Edison phonograph, and even how to acquire depleted batteries from automobile garages can be found in Popular Mechanics magazines that were published prior to 1912, so it seems Elmer may have been reading Popular Mechanics in addition to The Star Toy Maker.

According to Elmer, they sometimes threw their old dry cells out their 2nd story window at their dogs below when the dogs were "celebrating." What is interesting about this sentence is that the Osterhoudt's had dogs. Elmer and Cyril built "grass sleds" and used them to sled down Skinners Butte, which rises 200 feet above the surrounding city. Skinners Butte is still a recreation spot today.

Near the base of the Butte was a mill race connecting to the Williamette River, which crossed 8th Avenue. This was the location of Wilbert Osterhoudt's mill. (There were several planing mills at the time in the immediate area.)  In any case, the butte is only a few blocks away from where they lived on the 200 block of 8th Avenue. On top of the butte were the charred ruins of an observatory, which had been dynamited in 1905, so it must have been a great place for kids to explore. Link

That's about all we know of Elmer's youth. Elmer and his brother Cyril were both destined to spend their careers in radio. By the way, Elmer still had the book in 1966.

Downtown Eugene, Oregon in 1909. Skinners Butte rises in the background. Elmer and Cyril may have walked down this very street. For all we know, they may even be in the photo! There are few, if any, of these buildings still standing as they've been replaced with modern structures. The Osterhoudt & Smith planing mill site is now occupied by the US District Court Clerk's Office

Eugene was home to the University of Oregon. See this map.
Also, see these 1912 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. The Osterhoudt planing mill is at the bottom of Plate 16. Link

On August 14, 1915, Elmer's father married Alice Elsie Shields, Lillie's sister, in Los Angeles, California. They had a daughter named Wilda Frances Osterhoudt. Elmer and Cyril eventually had six half-brothers and sisters, though two sisters died young; Nora died of Whooping Cough when she was almost 4 years old, and Ada May died of pneumonia the day before her second birthday. (See page ten for list of siblings.)

The Los Angeles 1916 Long Beach City directory lists W A Osterhoudt as a  woodworker at Jones Sash and Door Company, located at 1101 West Broadway. The "W A" would be William Arthur. Unfortunately it doesn't list his address.

In the preface in his handbooks, Elmer wrote that he was a technician at Electrical Products Company. This was a company founded in 1912 that made electric and neon signs. Elmer wrote that he worked there "during the war," so this would have been sometime after 1915 but before he began his stint with the Navy in 1918. The company was located at 941 16th Street in Los Angeles, which places it in the Long Beach area along with the Jones Sash & Door company where his father worked.

With the exception of two brief moves to Reno, Nevada in 1950 and 1971, Elmer spent the rest of his life in California. He and all of his siblings are buried in the Los Angeles area.

NOTE: A spark gap transmitter basically transmitted bursts of static. These bursts were created by rapidly opening and closing the connection to the low voltage side of an induction coil. Elmer used the spark plug coil from a Ford, possibly a Model T. (The coils were so plentiful that you can still buy one today.) The tone was determined by how quickly the circuit was interrupted, and this is probably what Elmer's AC doorbell was used for. The rotary spark transmitted a higher pitched tone, but it was still just a controlled form of static.

When Elmer wrote that he "proceeded to jam up the air" he wasn't kidding. These signals were so broad that two transmitters operating within a short distance of each other would drown each other out, blanketing the airwaves with noise.

	A Ford Model T spark plug coil and an antique doorbell. Of course, it wouldn't have been antique in 1919.
Not all Model T coils look exactly like this one, but they are similar. The Ford Model T had four coils, each one in a wooden box. Millions of Model Ts had been produced by 1919 so there were plenty of coils to be had. There is a vibrator mounted on the top to create a high voltage spark, but Elmer used a doorbell (hopefully, minus the bell).

The "Pacific Radio News" issue of May 10, 1920 lists Elmer as holding the radio call letters 6NW. They spelled his name wrong. The "Citizen's Radio Call Book" of November 1922 spelled it worse - "Ousterbouat." 

Listing in "Pacific Radio News"

According to "Amateur Stations of the United States," in 1920 and 1921 Elmer had a 1000 watt station at 8011 Crockett Street in Los Angeles. (The actual address is Crockett Boulevard, not Crockett Street.) Elmer wrote that the station was actually only 500 watts.

So, how did he fund his radio hobby, research and experiments?


 

Osterhoudt entry in the 1920 Los Angeles City Directory.

An entry in the Los Angeles 1920 City Directory shows an E. G. Osterhoudt working as a laborer at Hammond Lumber Company. Both his father and his Uncle John (who lived in the same house with Elmer) were carpenters, and would probably know if a job became available at a lumber yard. Though Hammond Lumber was about four miles from his house on Crockett Blvd, Alameda Street was only a few blocks away. A trolley car could have transported him up Alameda Street in less than a half an hour.

As for his roles at Majestic Electrical Products and U. S. Motor Company, Elmer never mentioned these in his writings, nor did he ever mention working in a lumber or paper mill, nor did he mention how hard it was for a veteran to find a job after the war.

Likewise, he never mentioned that in 1920 he was a member of the California Academy of Sciences.

The January 1920 US Census shows Elmer working for a power company in Fresno, CA as a wireless operator. In June of 1920, he traveled to San Francisco hoping to land a job as a radio operator aboard a ship. He arrived on a Saturday. By Sunday he was down to his last $20. By Monday he was employed at Southern California Edison Company as a wireless operator.
Apparently, he wasn't there very long.

According to Elmer's application to the Society of Wireless Pioneers, in 1920 he was at the RCA wireless station at Marshall, California, about 40 miles north of San Francisco. Today the station is an historic landmark in a park-like setting, but when Elmer was there it was surrounded by barren coast land. He was only there a week. In July of 1920 he finally obtained a wireless operator position aboard a ship.

Elmer relates in "MRL Data Sheets Vol. 6" that  in 1920, while in San Francisco and waiting to go to sea, he had $25 and spent $20 of it on a Kodak camera to take a picture of a Japanese ship named "Tenyo Maru."
 

This crop from the 1920 Compton Union High School Alumni page shows Elmer as a 1918 graduate. He's working for Standard Oil. (Watts, CA is where he lived when he attended the school.)

In 1921 there was some sort of strike, which backfired. The radio operators lost $20 a month, and on July 21, 1921 Elmer ended up on a lumber scow named the "Willamette."  Apparently, life aboard the Willamette wasn't very pleasant due to the light ship lurching in the waves. Elmer wrote that he got six meals a day; "three down and three up." A good part of his time was spent "hanging over the rail." (A Radio Service Bulletin dated October 1, 1921 lists a "Willamette" with a transmitter range of 200 miles. It had a Gray and Danielson radio. Gray and Danielson, also known as Remler Company, was founded in 1918 in San Francisco, so this seems to be the correct ship. Searching on the Internet for "Willamette" will lead you down many strange paths.)

On August 31, 1921, Elmer was aboard the tug named "Sea Lion." In a newspaper article published by the Oregon Daily Emerald on November 29, 1921 it states that radio operator Elmer G. Osterhoudt is working aboard the tug "Sea Lion," plying up and down the Pacific coast, where he is also studying botany and physiology. (He was taking a correspondence course from the University of Oregon at the time, ergo the newspaper article.)

On September 28, 1921, Elmer was in the radio room of the SS Atlas, owned by Standard Oil Co. of California.  By June 17, 1922 he was aboard the F. H. Hillman, an oil tanker built in 1921, also for Standard Oil of California.

From July 3, 1922 to September 4, 1923 he worked aboard the "El Segundo," an oil tanker built in 1912 and owned by Standard Oil. 


                            Entry from Radio Service Bulletin, US Department of Commerce, January, 1915. Page 12.
                     (NOTE: Marconi Wireless was incorporated into the Radio Corporation of America in October, 1919)


Though the SS Atlas, the J. A. Moffett and the El Sugundo were owned by Standard Oil , Elmer actually worked for RCA. Elmer wrote that in the 1920s he reported to a Chief Radio Operator named Dick Johnson, who worked for RCA. On the next page is a letter Elmer wrote while aboard the ship, signed "care of Radio Corporation of America."

Elmer wrote that he "quit" in 1923. By then, almost every other ship on the Pacific coast was a Japanese cargo ship.  

In January of 1924 he opened the "Nadeau Radio Electric Shop." We have an address for this shop from the Los Angeles Times as 1928 East Nadeau Street. This was just up the block and around the corner from Elmer's house at 8011 Crockett Boulevard!

This advertisement, from the Los Angeles Times, is dated June 18, 1922. In 1922, Elmer was aboard the oil tankers "F. H. Hillman" and the "El Segundo." It seems the Nadeau Radio Electric Shop already existed in some form before Elmer opened it in 1924. According to the 1922 Los Angeles directory, it was owned by Lou and Eva Kipp. Their residence was next door at 1930 East Nadeau Street. The buildings no longer exists.

Later in 1924 Elmer moved the radio shop to Manchester Avenue in Los Angeles, and named it the "Manchester Radio Electric Shop." This shop was one mile from his house. He worked in the store from 9AM till 9PM six days a week, and a half day on Sunday. According to Elmer, (Radio Notes No.1, page 16 and MRL Data Sheets Vol 3, Page 11) he made hundreds of Harkness Reflex sets. Back then you could trade in your old radio when purchasing a new one. Elmer would disassemble the old sets and build a Harkness Reflex using his own coils. He then added a power supply, batteries, a cabinet and a speaker, and sold them for $65. He was also a dealer of Stewart-Warner, Federal, Sparton, Ungar & Watson, Edison, Grebe, and Majestic brand radios.
 

In various issues of "Radio News" and QST magazine, it was reported that the call sign 6NW was heard all over the country from 1925 to 1928. 6NW was also heard in Venezuela, Japan, Alaska, and even a submarine docked at a port in Honolulu, Hawaii. 6NW made the "Brass Pounders League" in the March 1926 issue of QST with 117 contacts. However, these contacts weren't made by Elmer Osterhoudt. Elmer had been issued the call letters 6NW in 1919. The call 6NW was REASSIGNED sometime around 1922 to James F. Upchurch of Vallejo, California. In 1924, 6NW was assigned to Emry C. Stuedle of Vermont Street in Los Angeles, California. Emry Stuedle seems to be the person who made the contacts heard all over the world. Elmer apparently let his license lapse. At the time, he was a radio operator working aboard various ships at sea and would have been unable to renew it. Coincidently (or not) when he opened the Manchester Radio and Electric Shop in 1924 it was also the end of the era of the spark-gap transmitter. In December 1915, the year Elmer made his first crystal set, the Bureau of Navigation had issued 6NW to Morrison R. Webb, of 541 18th Street in Oakland, CA. Imagine if Elmer had heard 6NW instead of 6JG on that fateful day, then ended up with the first call letters he ever heard! Early call letters were frequently reassigned. Since the first digit represented the area of the country, there were only two letters available for the call sign in each of nine districts. California was "6." There are 676 combinations of the 26 letters in the alphabet (26 x 26). However, the letters X, Y and Z were not used as the first letter, limiting the number to 598. The number of stations quickly exceeded that amount and a third letter was added in the 1920s. Three letter combinations beginning with the letters K. N. W, X, Y and Z were not used, as well as "SOS" and "PRB." Also not used were calls beginning with "QR" or "QS," as well as anything determined to be vulgar or objectionable. This still left over 10,000 call signs per district.

Elmer wrote that the Amateur Radio guys wanted him to set up a station in his shop, but he refused because the shop would always be full of loiterers and no work would get done. He said that calling "CQ" far into the night would be a waste of time that could be put to other uses. "Running a radio shop took all your time if you wanted to stay in business."
 

This was a time of unprecedented prosperity and innovation in the United States. What a great time to get married! In addition to the booming radio business, the Osterhoudt's could look forward to a life of new inventions; everything from an electric washing machine, refrigerator and vacuum cleaner to sliced bread and Penicillin, and even a personal Kodak motion picture camera. The most exciting news was that Television had evolved from a system of motors and spinning disks to an electronic version invented by Philo T. Farnsworth. Soon, everyone would be able to "see by wireless" in their own homes, and The Manchester Radio Shop could add the word "Television" to its name. The future must have appeared very promising.

Two weeks after they were married the stock market crashed, followed by the Great Depression. Sales of clothing, cars and radios collapsed. Industrial production fell by 47% and nearly 25% of American households did not have a single employed wage earner. Business became so bad Elmer decided to go back to sea. He spent a month at Pacific Radio School brushing up on his code. but when he tried to get a job at RCA on a ship, the Chief Radio Operator laughed. There were 150 guys on a list waiting for the same job.

In 1930 Cyril and Leona moved back to Los Angeles, to 8019½ Crockett Boulevard, where Elmer and Cyril's father, stepmother, uncle John, and four brothers and sisters lived. On June 18, 1930, John Osterhoudt passed away. Cyril and Leona were officially married on August 23, 1930. On December 3, 1930, Elmer's father Wilbert passed away.

Elmer kept the radio shop open but moved it from Foothill Boulevard to 1508 23rd Avenue, much closer to where they lived. No longer named Manchester Radio Electric Shop, the new store was named Modern Radio Laboratories. In 1932 he "invented" the celluloid plug-in coil and the No.1 and No.2 crystal sets. The trademarks for MRL and Modern Radio Laboratories were registered on December 15, 1932.