On Apr 10, 12:41*am, spsffan wrote:

Oh, shades of tube radios with tubes of various voltages, in series,
adding up to approximately 120 volts. Most small table radios from the
1940s to the end of tubes used this format.

Physicist Richard Feynman used to repair radios in his youth. In his
memoir, he explains how he diagnosed a problem--the radio had loud
static on start-up, but then was fine--and he solved it by moving
tubes around. (The specific issues of what he fixed escapes me, but
he knew how the radio circuits worked at warm up and at play.)

ob train: He lived in the Rockaways, originally served by the LIRR,
but converted to a NYC subway extension in the early 1950s.