From Russia, For Cash

Here's my Nagant, marked 1923/45. To complete the retrospy look, it is paired with a tiny Russian radiotelegraph key! (Which joined Collection X courtesy of Turk Turon, presumably smuggled out by camel-train from Bishkek).

I should have added a coin (kopek?) for scale. The knob of the key is about two-thirds the diameter of a penny.

And just to prove I truly do commute from The Past, one of the radio bookshelves in my office at Roseholme. Note the very modern cameras -- no leathette-covered cardboard Brownie for this gal! -- and high-fidelity Rochelle-salts crystal microphone, improvised from a Brush-Clevite headphone element plus odds and ends, not to mention the very latest edition of Radio magazine's Handbook and several previous years as well.

(Time travel works both ways -- at the upper right, you can just see two editions of Horowitz and Hill's The Art Of Electronics, a marvelous book for anyone with a scientific or technical background who needs to "do" electronics. The boys'll get you up to speed fast! Why two? They did do a fair amount of revsions and expansion but I wore out my first copy; I only keep it for sentiment).