United States Radiator Corporation Trade Catalog Capitol Radiator EDR Ratings Smithsonian

random12345

Here are some scanned pages from US Radiator Company's Capitol Radiators and Capitol Fincast trade catalogs from 1938 and 1939. Thought others might find this to be useful. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History Library accepts reference requests and has a large collection of old radiator trade catalogs. And apparently not just for this one company either. They were very helpful. Although I have already had a new boiler installed, I still think it's valuable to know the exact EDR of each radiator whenever possible. If I had gone with the industry rule of thumb of 2.5 sq ft/section, in our case I would have been off by nearly 81 sq ft, basically over 30%.

Capitol Fincast ratings apparently changed somewhat from 1934 to 1938-39. https://archive.org/details/capitolfincastra00unit/page/10/mode/2up

EDIT:

Here's one more from US Radiator's 1952 Data Book (CPLSci-Tech). That one was sent to me from the Cleveland Public Library. Their thin tube radiators went from 1.5" centers to 1 3/4" centers, several models were discontinued, ratings went up for some of them and down for others.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Maybe @Erin Holohan Haskell can take a peak at this

AJCimino

Gotta love this stuff. Makes me wish I was alive in the twenties, thirties, and forties when America was a dynamic powerhouse.

JUGHNE

Aj, I have had that thought also....however no power threaders, hammer drills, battery drills etc.
And the roaring twenties, followed by the nasty thirties where a dollar a day for shovel work was good income, and then in the 40's we might have been drafted.
As I was in 1969.

Veteran's day always gets me in a melancholy mood.

Thank someone tomorrow........not me..... I was never without hot water and AC for 4 years.

EdTheHeaterMan

This may violate the rules of this website. Some of those booklets have prices in them.

JUGHNE

I doubt if any other company today will under bid them on prices.

Erin Holohan Haskell

EBEBRATT-Ed said:

Maybe @Erin Holohan Haskell can take a peak at this

These are wonderful. Thanks for sharing @random12345. We'll add them to our museum.

Erin Holohan Haskell

EdTheHeaterMan said:

This may violate the rules of this website. Some of those booklets have prices in them.

I think we're a-ok on this one, @EdTheHeaterMan.

random12345

Erin Holohan Haskell said:

EBEBRATT-Ed said:

Maybe @Erin Holohan Haskell can take a peak at this

These are wonderful. Thanks for sharing @random12345. We'll add them to our museum.

No problem. I see you already have some catalogs from US Radiator Corporation up there. The one from Mike Thies is from 1928. The other from Bob Moore looks to be from 1934. Might be a good idea to include the publication dates in the titles. The EDR ratings changed so much between those years. For example, a Capitol four tube 23" tall went from 2.5 sq ft/section in 1934 to 22" tall and 1.6 sq ft/section in 1938. Do you know why that happened? Was it the whole industry that changed this way or just this company?

Erin Holohan Haskell

@random12345, we'll add the dates. Thanks!

And as for the radiator changes, there was a global shortage of iron during that time leading up to WWII. They must have redesigned the radiators to account for this.

random12345

Interesting. I didn't know that. I was wrong about the ratings changing. There's actually several different lines of radiators. The ratings look to have stayed the same. It seems like they weren't making the Capitol Thintube line until after 1934. The price per sq ft of the Capitol and Capitol Thintube look to be similar, so they just decided to sell smaller radiators. Adjusted for inflation a 28 section, 19" tall 4 tube rad in 1938 would cost only about $277 today. The cheapest price I have found online for an equivalent rad is $427. So radiators have gotten more expensive surprisingly...

Erin Holohan Haskell

Thanks for clarifying. Interesting point.

retiredguy

you can click on "heating help.com" at the top of the page you can access the museum which has a catalog of ARCO rads and gives the correction factor for average water temps down to 150 F

Hap_Hazzard

AJCimino said:

Gotta love this stuff. Makes me wish I was alive in the twenties, thirties, and forties when America was a dynamic powerhouse.

I guess, if you can overlook the Great Depression.