Eighty years ago, if you had a battery powered portable radio, you could run it at home on household current for only $15, thanks to this battery eliminator from General Transformer Corp., 1250 W. Van Buren St., Chicago. That address is now an apartment building overlooking the Eisenhower Expressway.
The ad appeared in the December 1945 issue of Radio Retailing.
If you were looking for a radio in Milwaukee a hundred years ago, this Magnavox TRF-5 would have been a good choice. As the name implies, it had five tubes. Apparently, 3 of them were for RF, with the other two for audio amplification to drive the included speaker.
It is shown here in an ad for Gimbels, in the December 5, 1925 issue of the Milwaukee Leader. The price tag of $89 works out to $1651 in 2025 dollars.
Eighty years ago, this picture appeared on the cover of Radio Retailing, December 1945. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, so I asked ChatGPT for the back story:
In the winter of 1946, the little shop on Westbury Avenue still smelled faintly of machine oil and warm dust—the scent of radios waking up after a long night. Mr. Harland, the shop’s proprietor, prided himself on being able to fix anything with a dial, but that morning he wasn’t repairing a set. He was demonstrating one.
“This one,” he said, patting the glossy black radio as though it were a fine horse, “has FM. Not many folks know it yet, but FM is the future. Clear as a bell—no static at all on a good day.”
Across from him sat a young woman in a tailored dark suit, gloves folded neatly in her lap. Her name was Margaret Hale. She had just returned from Washington, where she’d been decoding signals for the Navy. The war was over, but she hadn’t quite learned how to live quietly. She felt strange having nothing urgent to listen for.
Her aunt had suggested she buy a new radio. “Something cheerful,” the aunt had said, “to bring a bit of the world back into the house.” So Margaret found herself in Harland’s shop, watching the man beam with pride over the technology he’d been waiting years to see flourish.
He turned a dial, and warm music floated out—strings, a gentle swing rhythm, the kind of melody that wrapped itself around a person’s shoulders. Margaret smiled for the first time in weeks.
“It’s lovely,” she said.
“It is,” Harland agreed. “And next year—television. Mark my words. Pictures through the air. Folks’ll gather around these things like they once did around the piano.”
Margaret imagined it. Scenes unfolding in real time, stories arriving right into one’s home. She wondered what sort of world would rise now that the explosions had quieted. Maybe one with more voices, more connections, more ways to understand one another.
“I’ll take it,” she said.
Harland brightened even further. “Excellent choice. I’ll have it delivered this afternoon.”
As she stood to leave, she paused beside the radio. The music was still playing, light and hopeful. For the first time since the war ended, Margaret felt the faint stirrings of a life with room for ordinary joys—songs in the morning, news in the evening, perhaps even laughter filling the quiet corners of her home.
Outside, the cold wind of January 1946 swept past, but she felt warm. The world was humming again, and she was ready to listen.
I’m pretty sure that’s a toaster, and not an FM radio just to the left. But I can’t quite see what Mr. Harland is fiddling with, so it’s quite possible it’s an FM radio. But one way or another, the world was humming again.
If you were Christmas shopping for someone in a small apartment 85 years ago, then you really couldn’t go wrong with this radio-phono from Motorola. The record player was automatic, it had “BIG” reception, and the cabinet was beautiful walnut veneer. The model number is not stated, but it appears to be a Model 61F (or a slight cabinet variant).
If that small apartment already had a radio but not a record player, then for only $29.95 you could get a fully automatic wireless phonograph (sometimes called a phono oscillator) to listen to your records over the radio.
The ad appeared in Life magazine 85 years ago today, December 2, 1940, and also reminded readers that Motorola had radios designed to fit your car.
Eighty-five years ago, the December 1940 issue of Popular Science carried this helpful (but self-explanatory) hint of how to illuminate the dial of your portable radio. Simply attach a penlight to the cover, pointing at the dial.
Shown here is a simple one-transistor regenerative receiver for the broadcast band, from the November 1955 issue of Popular Electronics. It had been sent in to the magazine by one Mr. R. Zarr of Brooklyn, NY, who pointed out the simple regeneration mechanism, consisting of two capacitors across the emitter and collector of the CK722 transistor.
The set was said to be selective, being able to separate the many stations booming in in the New York area.
A television, or even a radio in your car, was a status symbol 70 years ago, as evidenced by this item from the November 1955 issue of Popular Electronics:
The Snyder Manufacturing Co. has announced that not all homes with television antennas on the roof have a TV set in the living room. Likewise, not all automobiles with radio antennas have auto radios.
A year-long survey has been completed by Snyder’s distributors and field men. It was discovered that out of every 100 homes with TV antennas visible on top of the roof, 7.3 have no working TV set. Of 100 automobiles inspected by Snyder, approximately 12.1 do not have radio receivers.
Non -working TV antennas were attributed to home owners who put up cheap an- tennas to give the impression that they owned TV sets. Some families (about two out of every 100) owned TV sets that went bad and had not been repaired. One family out of every 500 explained that they were anticipating color TV and had not installed a black-and-white receiver to go with their antenna.
As for the 12.1 cars with “phony” car radio antennas, the Snyder survey indicated that virtually all such motorists were putting up a false front. To meet this demand ( ?), the Snyder Co. will soon market a “Tenna-Phony.”
Apparently, the good folks at Snyder were true to their word, and the Tenna-Phony did hit the market. You can see a New Old Stock example at this auction link.
Seventy years ago this month, the November 1955 issue of Boys’ Life carried this feature, “It’s The Ham in Them,” giving an overview of Amateur Radio. It noted that there were 120,000 hams in the U.S., with another 50,000 around the world, and that Uncle Sam had gone out of his way to make the hobby enticing to youth.
Among other topics, the article detailed the potential for hams in an emergency, some of which are depicted here. For example, when Hurricane Diane hit the Northeast, three hundred trembling youngsters were stranded in ankle-deep water on an island of the Delaware River. Little attention was given to a car stopped on the far bank. Even had it been noticed, it wouldn’t have been capable of rescue, or so it appeared. But a squadron of helicopters soon appeared. The driver of the car had been a ham, and had put in the call to Civil Defense officials. (The incident appears to be detailed at this link.
In another case, a truck had plunged off a mountain in Arizona, a a rancher brought them to Camp Geronimo, a scout camp. The camp director was a ham (Ed Burkhart, W7SUI) who put in an emergency call to Phoenix, resulting in the dispatch of an ambulance plane.
As in 1955, Amateur Radio is primarily a hobby. But it can be a source of information and connection with the outside world in case of an emergency. An excellent example is when Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina in 2024. Hams, and their neighbors, were in a position to provide vital information, because an ad-hoc network quickly formed, mostly using a repeater just outside the disaster area. There might have been a few people “rescued” as a result of this communication. But more importantly, residents had access to current information, such as whether certain roads were open, where stores and gas stations were operating, etc. Radio also provided the ability to notify friends and family members that someone was safe. An excellent recounting of these events can be found at this article by K4SWL, who provided this vital communication for his neighbors.
As one-tube radios go, this one is about as simple as they get. It appeared in the November 1945 issue of Radio Craft, and had been sent to the magazine by one Bill Buehrle, Jr., of Ferguson, MO. With just 3 volts on the plate, he pulled in several stations 25 miles away, even without resorting to regeneration from the tickler coil. The editors noted that with the variable capacitor shown, two coils might be necessary to cover the entire broadcast band.
According to his 2018 obituary, Buehrle was born in 1927 and was an Eagle Scout prior to serving in the U.S. Army in World War II. He was an amateur radio operator and electrical engineer with at least one patent.
I’m not sure exactly what’s going on here, but this duo appeared on the cover of QST 100 years ago, November 1925. The elder op looks like Lionel Barrymore, but he wasn’t that old at the time.
The artist is Clyde Darr, 8ZZ, later W8ZZ. He was a prolific QST illustrator, and also served as ARRL division director. He died in 1929 at the age of 50.