This woman is listening to the radio in her kitchen, but she’s doing it at the fraction of the cost of a new radio, thanks to the remote speaker described in the September 1950 issue of Popular Science.

The radio is playing in another room, up to 150 feet away. It’s an easy matter to run a speaker wire to another room, but this means that to adjust the volume, you need to go back to the radio. If you want to install the remote speaker in a noisy location, this can pose a problem.

The magazine provides a solution, as this is more than just a remote speaker. It actually contains a one-tube amplifier using the always useful 117N7GT tube, whose filament runs right off the line current. It’s hooked to the radio speaker terminals through a transformer, and the variable resistor at the input allows you to easily turn the volume of the speaker up or down, without having to adjust the radio.

The article points out that the idea would work equally well with an automatic phonograph with a stack of records.