Sony Walkman Forerunners, 1950s vintage radio, 1947 Belmont, Regency transistor - collectornet.net

I showed you this radio, the 1947 Belmont Boulevard, in another video. It was the first REAL pocket radio. But it had no speaker; the listener could only hear it through an earphone.

Starting with the Regency TR-1 transistor radio in 1954, there were speakers small enough to fit in a radio that could fit in your pocket. And the personal music boom really took off.

But let's back up a minute. Radio has been around about 100 years now. Early radio was weak, that is to say very quiet and could be heard only through headphones. Soon, amplifying speakers were made to allow radio to be played out into a room. One company that made such speakers named itself after the concept, in Latin. Magna-Vox. Big voice. Magnavox. You've heard of it. And that's the way most people enjoyed radio in the ensuing years--through speakers. Though radio didn't start that way, it became the expectation that a radio had a speaker.

Portable radios usually had an earphone jack so the listener could choose to listen privately if they wished. Every now and then some radio would appear WITHOUT a speaker, for earphone-only listening with no option of hearing through a speaker. Why would people buy a radio without the option of hearing it out loud? Because it was cheaper? -- or because they assumed it HAD a speaker? Here's one of those. It has a kind of a fake speaker grille so I think the maker of this radio, Stantex, Shirasuna Denki, did indeed hope to catch a few customers with a bargain price, unaware that there was no speaker.

Even though this radio was made in the transistor era, which began in 1954, it has no transistors. Instead, it has 3 vacuum tubes. Tubes used a good deal more energy than transistors so batteries didn't last as long. And with a tube radio you had to have two different batteries--one to power the radio and another one just to light the tubes, like the tiny light bulbs that they are. And they generate heat. This radio could come in handy on a cold winter's day--as a hand-warmer!

The carrying case may be brown like leather and have a texture like leather, but it's vinyl. What used to be called leatherette.

These earphone-only radios harken back to the earliest days of radio--but they are also the forerunners of the way much of audio today is heard: through earphones. The shift from speakers to earphones began in earnest in 1979 with one particular device from Sony that changed everything. Can you guess what device I am talking about? Oh wait, I gave it away in the title of this video! You'll find videos all about that device on this channel--and lots more videos on interesting things. Check them out.

Stantex Pocket Radio
Model PC-200
Shirasuna Denki Mfg Co., Japan, late 1950s
Tubes by TEN (Fujitsu)
Tuning capacitor branded "Silver."
Sole agent: Stantex Manufacturing Co, Inc., Chicago, Illinois.

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