Motorola Portable Radios, 1951

[medren.livejournal.com]

Jeanne Crain doesn't seem very excited about it, but I would love one of those radios.

Comments

[etinterrapax.livejournal.com]

Any color you want, as long as it's maroon or green!

[weelisa.livejournal.com]

That's interesting - it isn't actually a transistor radio - just compact. I wonder when transistors came out? Still, this would have been pretty impressive technology for the time.

[weelisa.livejournal.com]

Oh, and she's so pretty isn't she? They did glam better back in dem dare days.

[bradygirl_12]

I think transistors came out in the 1960s.

[weelisa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember my sister probably got one of the first - what a tinny sound it had.

[bradygirl_12]

True, but people loved 'em. It gave you the chance to go around with really small radios for the beach and at the ballgame. I remember being at a Patriots football game and listening to the Red Sox on it during the postseason. :)

[cactuswren.livejournal.com]

Per Wikipedia, the first transistor radio came out in 1954.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I used to get to look inside radios like this. They had tubes and used B batteries to light those filaments. Things were very neatly arranged, and by diligently poking around, you'd find more swell features you didn't know were there, like antennas that folded out and such.

What's even more impressive is the tiny TV set made by, I think, RCA, in the 50s. It had something like a six-inch picture tube, and was about a foot deep, and that was the total size of it. A real nightmare to try and service one, requiring fourth-dimensional transport devices to get your hands in where you could even take one of the tubes out to check it.

God, I miss the radios I used to have. Three or four bakelite table radios, a couple of wooden table radios, and even a floor model with a 78 turntable and shortwave. All had to be given away back when I was moving around a lot, damn it.

[weelisa.livejournal.com]

That is a small tv for the time! I remember the National Geographic ads from the time - most tvs were still HUGE.

I love Bakelite and I really should have bought that reproduction one I saw one time because it's just so cool. My kitchen really needs a 1940 radio.

My parents had a floor model radio with the record player on top - state of the art at one time.

[singeaddams.livejournal.com]

I want one, too!

[jazzybabe56.livejournal.com]

yeah - she really looks like she is having a simply wonderful time, doesn't she??

[whoseline_wlsc]

ooo I want one of these too! The green one!

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

The word “radio” appears nowhere in this ad. 'Antenna' appears twice, 'reception' once - your only clue to what the product actually IS. This is confidence. Or foolishness.

[chicklet-girl.livejournal.com]

This radio fills me with ennui. Listen to it, or don't. It matters not at all. Le sigh.

[teal-cuttlefish.livejournal.com]

"Here, sweetheart. Hold this and be beautiful."

[laplor.livejournal.com]

Totally! It looks like they put her in the skimpiest costume used in the featured movie, and then just paraded various products into the space in front of her: Radio, handbag, skin cream, jello salad. It matters not.

[afranjes.livejournal.com]

What is she looking at?

[undergroundsea.livejournal.com]

I'll take one, and it's good she can bring her radio too :)

[herbadness.livejournal.com]

I think those radios are darling.

My parents had an old radio that had FM, AM and PM dials. I never knew what the PM stood for. Police monitor? It was from around the early 1950s.