[David Dunlop]

Since Starting this project, I have been curious about what company the Canadian Marconi Company subcontracted for production of the wireless tent kit they designed for the 52-Set.

The Parts list illustrations gave a very good description of the dimensions for the Wireless tent and its Valise. The tent itself was a slightly expanded version footprint of the then current 2-Man Officers Tent, with a correspondingly longer 2-Section Ridge Pole and pair of End poles. The valise was also slightly enlarged to accommodate thee larger tent components. The original Officers Tent Valise was never identified as such as it was unique to that tent. With the arrival of a slightly larger tent for the 52-Set to work from, the ‘TENT, WIRELESS VALISE’ identification was added to this valise, to avoid confusion in the field, in all likelihood.

To see if the manufacturer of the wireless tent could be identified, I posted the illustration of the valise on the MLU Forum recently and within 24 hours, Colin Alford had responded with some photos of a standard tent valise in his possession, with matching logo, name and date, S.S. Holden Ltd. of Ottawa. The original illustration, and Colin’s two photos are attached here, for your reference. It has only taken 80 years, but once again we now know one more subcontractor used by the Canadian Marconi Company during their production of the Wireless Set No. 52 Cdn.


David