In 1946, the war was over, and it was time to start designing the dream house.  A dream house wouldn’t be complete without a built-in radio.  And if you’re going to build a radio into your house, it may as well be a shortwave radio!

Shown here in the April 1946 issue of Popular Mechanics is just that.  It is the Ansley Paneltone receiver.  With one of these babies, you would have a 17 tube radio behind the wall. In addition to the standard broadcast band,it would cover both FM and shortwave, with pushbutton tuning. There was also provision for a phonograph connection. The 12 inch speaker would put out 15 watts of room filling audio.

I haven’t been able to find any evidence that this set ever made it into production. I have found references to the smaller 7 tube set shown in the same article, which covered just the standard broadcast band. It too featured pushbutton tuning, and its six inch speaker put out five watts.  You can find more information about that set, which also carried the Ansley Paneltone name, at RadioMuseum.org.

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