I don’t know if they’re on the beach at Benton Harbor, but seventy years ago this month, this couple were listening to some entertaining program on a radio built into a metal lunch box, as described in the June 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics.

The set was a four-tube superheterodyne, with a 67.5 volt battery supplying the B+ and 3 flashlight batteries in parallel lighting up the filaments. Perhaps the set served as inspiration for the famous Gilligan’s Island radio, as it featured a telescoping whip antenna attached to one side of the internal antenna coil. The built-in antenna was said to pull in local stations, and with an outdoor antenna, even distant stations would supply loudspeaker volume.

The finished set had a professional look thanks, in part, to a dial scale printed in the magazine. For the finishing touch to the set, the dial could be cut out of the magazine and cemented to the case.