Ninety years ago this month, May 1925, Radio in the Home Magazine featured a number of portable sets then available on the market. The young woman shown here is listening to the Kodel P11 one-tube model, which measured only 5-3/4 x 4-1/4 x 3 inches, and which would operate either with or without an aerial. It appears that this is the portable version of the model C11, some pictures of which are available at this link.

The Kodel listener is anonymous, but that is not the case of the young woman shown here in her fur coat getting ready to listen to her Crosley portable. She is Miss Phyllis Sacia of Galesville, Wisconsin, who was the winner of the 1925 Crosley-Dolly Varden Annual Beauty Contest. According to her 1953 obituary, she married the year after this picture was taken and taught home economics in Menomonie, Wisconsin.

Finally, the young woman shown in the final photograph below appears to be listening to an ordinary home set. But this set, the Operadio convertible, had a special cabinet which allowed the radio to be removed and used as a portable. A surviving example of this six-tube TRF set can be found on this website.  The article warned that “there is a saying in the radio industry that you can put a strap and a handle on a grand piano and call it a portable instrument if you want to.” That advice might have applied to this set, which weighed in at about 40 pounds.

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