Talk:Gilbert Davey

Some suggestions from Studio 'E'

The text added at 23.37 on 27 February ("Fun with Radio ran to . . . Associates in 1986.") is a verbatim lift from a page on the Studio 'E' One-valve Radio web site, which belongs to me. I presume this text was imported with the intention of paraphrasing it. My statement regarding the possible existence of a U.S. edition of Fun with Radio is perhaps not very important in the great scheme of things, but I suggest that this verbatim text should be deleted, and that paraphrased text would have a more appropriate place in the article on the Fun with Radio book, in place of the text "The book ran to six editions."

I have a few other gentle suggestions:

Far from being a "newly developing" field, radio was surely a firmly established 40-50-year-old technology by the time that Davey was writing in the 1940s and 1950s.

There is apparently no Wikipedia article entitled "Crystal Set" (I guess this is a purely British expression), but there is one entitled Crystal Radio.

"Boys Own Paper" should be "Boy's Own Paper".

"His designs used early valves . . .". Perhaps a more correct statement might be "His designs used a variety of pre-war and post-war valve types . . .". The article should surely also mention that after some initial caution when transistors first became available to the amateur, Davey developed transistor designs too.

Finally, two cautions:

Studio E (with no quotes) is the trading name of a current London architectural practice. To avoid any possible confusion, my practice with my own site has been to reproduce exactly the name of the 1950s tv programme, Studio 'E' (single quotes round the 'E' - can you point one up and one down with Wiki-code??) and always to use the whole title - The Studio 'E' One-valve Radio, when referring to my web site itself. I assume this is acceptable on Wikipedia.

My own regular searches to date suggest (but do not prove) that Mr Davey is still living. If he is indeed still living, he has reached great age, and I have thought it right not to make any attempt to invade his privacy, and have relied wholly on published sources for my web pages. Friskanellin (talk) 13:16, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for the above, and for a great website. My apologies for errors, but all Wikipedia articles, and especially newly created ones, are 'work in progress' and as someone who often likes to start new articles I find it desirable to get certain things like references and links from and to other pages in place quickly as first priority in order to minimise the chance of it being deleted as 'insignificant' or criticised by software 'bots' that can fill it with tags in the first few minutes!! There are not many references out there to Gilbert Davey, and so your website is a major source. One problem I often have is that while inline references are required, there is not as far as I know any convention to indicate exactly what text is supported by a citation (the previous sentence, the entire paragraph?). Also, while you suggest 'paraphrasing', and I am against 'copy and paste' editing, changing the words does carry the danger of attributing to a source something that it does not actually say. I've made a few changes as you suggested, but please feel free to change and add to the article, as, although I was inspired to a career in electronics by 'Fun with Radio', and have never forgotten the name 'Gilbert Davey' (I recently managed to acquire a first edition of 'Fun' from an Amazon seller after many failed attempts) I have not studied this topic to anything like the extent that you clearly have. --Lindosland (talk) 11:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)