The biggest detail that needs to be understood, is that the technology of that period was no where near what it is today. To put it into perspective, you still had to rent your rotary phone from AT&T back then.
The blanks were thickly walled and heavy. The lighter of the 2 brands sold through Murats was the old Brown and original Lami's. Theses blanks offered more actions, and lengths, but were less popular in the lighter end of the models, because most guy's equated weight with strength and power. An attitude that is still pervasive with my personal choices. I don't own a salt water graphite rod. Not in surf anyway. I fish with guy's half my age that can't concieve of casting one of my old brownies with 3 ounce plugs all night.
The guy's that preferred the Harnells, for the most part, were the sand spikers. The longer blanks in the 12 foot range, could handle the really heavy stuff with relative ease. 8 ounces of lead and a whole herring or pogie, would reach the second bar with consistancy with a 705, or 6 hanging from the seat. From my memory, and experiance, you would have 3 or 4 Harnells soaking a bait in the spikes, and using a 10 or 11 foot Lami to throw metal lips while waiting for a pick up on one of the bait rods.
The lami's were also the preffered choice of the conventional casting guy's, with Penn squidders in the seat. The actions of these blanks allowed a more powerfull load up in order to reach a far off blitz with a 4 or 5 ounce pencil or polaris popper. The line of choice early on was either tarred cotton (the real old timers), or nylon squidding line. Mono was occaisionally used, but unless you were really familiar with it, birds nests would cause you to switch out the reel, in order to clean it out later. Most of the guy's I knew back then had smooth thumbs having burned their prints right off from thumbing the cast. I still use a 12 foot brownie with a Penn Squdder loaded with 65 lb Power Pro.
There were 2 choices of guides back then. Pacific Bay made, and still makes, a stainless ringed V braced surf guide, with chrome plating for wear resistance. Mildrum made both surf and casting guides, with Stainless frames and carbide rings. The carbide was 100 times more wear resistant, but way more expensive. Most guy's opted for the Pac Bays with a carbide tip from mildrum, as the tip took more of the line wear punishment than the rest of the guides. The prefered conventional built was all mildrum carbides. It was felt that the Mildrum was a strong frame, and the squidding line would wear through the entire run of guides more than the spinning set ups with mono.

More to come.