I have seen Schenectay and even Springfeld (see below!) but Lahti was new to me. I spotted it yesterday on the dial of the receiver that the fellow from the UK was fixing. Lahti? What was that?
Turns out, this is a European Longwave thing.
Gemini explains:
When you see Lahti printed on the dial of an older radio, it is typically marking a Longwave (LW) broadcast frequency rather than a shortwave frequency.
The presence of Lahti on the dial relates to several historical factors:
The Lahti High-Power Station: Located in Lahti, Finland, the national broadcaster Yle operated a massive, high-power longwave transmission station on "Radio Hill" (Radiomäki) starting in the late 1920s.
Because of its central location and immense power (reaching up to 200 kW in later years), its signal could blanket all of Finland and carry across northern Europe. Dial Navigation: On older European and world-band radio dials, manufacturers frequently printed the names of major high-power European broadcasting cities (such as Lahti, Rome, Berlin, Moscow, or Droitwich) directly onto the glass or metal scale. Because consumers tuned radios by city or wavelength rather than just abstract kilohertz numbers, these city names served as benchmark reference points for specific frequencies (such as Lahti's long-standing assignment on the longwave band, which eventually settled on 252 kHz).
The Era of "All-Wave" and Multi-Band Radios: Older vintage receivers—particularly those manufactured in Europe or targeted at international markets—often featured multiple bands spanning Longwave, Medium Wave (AM), and Shortwave. Even if a radio is broadly referred to as a "shortwave" or multi-band radio, its dial layout almost always incorporated the Longwave band where powerhouse European utility and broadcasting stations like Lahti lived prior to the widespread decommissioning of European LW transmitters in the late 20th century.
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