Transistor Radio

A transistor radio is a small Transistor -based Radio receiver. Historically, the term "transistor radio" refers to a radio that is monaural and typically receives only the 540–1600 kilocycle AM Broadcast band.

The first commercial transistor radio, the Regency TR-1, was announced on October 18 , 1954 by the Regency Division of Industrial Development Engineering Associates of Indianapolis, Indiana and put on sale in November of 1954. It cost $49.95 (the equivalent of $361 in year-2005 dollars) and sold something near 150,000 units. Raytheon and Zenith transistor radios soon followed and were priced even higher. Even the first Japanese imports (in 1957) were priced at $30 and above. Transistor radios did not achieve mass popularity until the early 1960s when prices of some models fell below $20, then below $10 as markets became flooded with radios from Hong Kong.

Texas Instruments was behind the Regency transistor radio. In 1953 they had designed and built a prototype and were looking for an established radio manufacturer to develop and market a radio using their transistors. None of the major radio makers were interested. RCA had demonstrated a prototype transistor radio as early as 1952 and it is likely that they and the other radio makers were planning transistor radios of their own. But as it often does in business, it took smaller, aggressive companies (like Texas Instruments and Regency) to push innovation forward. In Japan, big firms like Matsushita and Toshiba who might have been expected to push forward with a transistor radio acted more like their big American counterparts. It was Sony , then a small, aggressive concern, who produced Japan's first transistor radio (in 1955).

The use of Transistor s instead of Vacuum Tube s as the amplifier elements meant that the device was much smaller and required far less power to operate than a tubed radio. The typical portable radio of the fifties was about the size and weight of a lunchbox, and contained several heavy (and non-rechargeable) Batteries : one or more so-called "A" batteries just to heat the tube filaments and a large 45 to 90 volt "B" battery to power the rest of the circuitry. By comparison, the "transistor" could fit in a pocket and weighed half a pound or less and was powered by standard flashlight batteries or a single compact 9 V battery. (The now-familiar 9 V battery was introduced specifically for powering transistor radios).

Listeners sometimes held an entire transistor radio directly against the side of the head, with the speaker against the ear, to minimize the "tinny" sound. Most radios also had earphone jacks and came with single earphones affording middling quality sound reproduction. Teenagers, with an earphone plugged into one ear, immersed in a private musical world, became a familiar sight, and one that made Ray Bradbury 's description of "seashell radios" in his 1953 Fahrenheit 451 seem prescient. To consumers familiar with the earphone listening experience of the transistor radio, the first Sony Walkman cassette player, with a pair of high-fidelity stereo earphones, would come as a revelation.

The transistor radio remains the single most popular Communications Device in existence. Some estimates suggest that there are at least seven billion of them in existence, almost all tunable to the common AM Band , and an increasingly high percentage of those also tunable to the FM Band . Some receive Shortwave broadcasts as well. Most operate on Battery Power . They have become small and cheap due to improved electronics which pack millions of Transistor s on one Integrated Circuit or chip. The prefix "transistor" basically now means an old pocket radio; it can be used to refer to any small radio but the term itself is somewhat obsolescent these days, since virtually all commercial broadcast receivers, pocket-sized or not, are transistor-based.

SEE ALSO

Broadcasting

NOTES

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Transistor Radio