If you wanted a portable radio 75 years ago, you could have one. It would weigh a mere 14 pounds, and would only set you back a dollar a week. This set was available for $19.95, or one dollar a week. It is shown here in this ad from the Milwaukee Sentinel for July 27, 1939.
I haven’t been able to find any information on the particular portable in the ad, but it looks very similar to the RCA model shown here. The RCA weighed in at 14 pounds, had four tubes, and operated on a 1.4 volt A battery and 90 volt B battery. The B battery was stated to last 250 hours, and sold for $3.50.
Philco was the first to start the trend of the “airplane luggage” (beige tweed with multicolored or dark brown stripes) cloth covered portable radios in late ’38, and by ’39 almost every radio manufacturer had one on the market. These were well engineered sets where, for the first time, they were truly self-contained in realistically sized cabinet. The large tubes worked on low current and listening to these today when restored leaves one impressed in both their sensitivity and wonderful warm tone. After WWII the “airplane-luggage” look was replaced with solid or textured Tolex coverings and plastic cabinets. Miniature tubes made the sets ever smaller and smaller up until the first hand-held transistor radios in the mid-’50’s.