This young woman looks overjoyed, and she has good reason to be. She can have a summer full of picnics, complete with radio, without spending a fortune on batteries, since she made the 6-transistor superheterodyne radio shown 70 years ago this month in the June 1956 issue of Popular Mechanics.

The magazine notes that the initial cost of this all transistor set was higher than a comparable tube set, but the cost difference would soon be made up by the lower cost of batteries. This one would run for many hours on two six-volt batteries, whereas the old fashioned set would quickly go through them by the dozen. The set is superheterodyne, so it will pull in stations along with the best.