Sixty years ago this month, the May 1960 issue of Popular Electronics showed how to make this three-transistor portable radio. It was billed by the magazine as a set that could be put together in one evening, and was perfect for the hobbyist who wanted to move on from crystal sets, but wasn’t quite ready for a superhet.

The attractive set was said to be about as big as the ubiquitous pack of cigarettes, in this case, king-size cigarettes.

The set used two 2N170 NPN transistors, and one 2N107 PNP. The first transistor served as detector, with the other two amplifying the audio. The set was said to be sensitive, pulling in all of the local stations with a short wire antenna. For more distant stations, the antenna had an alligator clip at the end, which could be clipped to a window screen or longer antenna. Permeability tuning was employed, with the slug of the loopstick screwed in and out.