Saturday, July 20, 2024

Transistor radio, 1958


Anyone who has used an old tube-type radio will remember the wait after the on button was actuated. It took a minute or so for the sound to start as the vacuum tubes warmed up and started functioning. Not so with the transistor radio, instant on! These new battery operated radios were also portable so your music could accompany you on picnics, to the beach etc. Really a great technological leap. 

This unit also advertises that it can act as a tuner for your home stereo, not sure how that might work in the days before Bluetooth or USB cables.
 

2 comments:

Joe said...

I've been playing with a few vintage radios lately and many of them had an input available to connect your phonograph to play through the radio's amplifier and speaker (singular speaker... pre-stereo days) but this is the first I've seen of a radio with an ouptput to connect to your living room hi-fi.
The big German radios (Grundig, Olympic) used a dual pin jack (like small bananna plugs) and the RCA's and many others used, you guessed it, RCA jacks and the cables that became universal on our seventies stereo's.
I also wonder what connection this used. Was Sony too small for fierce competition with RCA or did they see the writing on the wall and use existing hardware, or did they thumb their nose at the big American giant and use some other connection?
Can you see the back of the radio if you turn the page over and let us know?

Mister G said...

I wonder if the tuner option could be dnne with atwo wire RCA jack?
PS, turning the page did not help:-)