Zenith "Memory Timer" clock radio
 

Zenith, back in the '50s or early '60s I believe, manufactured and marketed a clock radio it termed the "Memory Timer". The clock could be set to wake the user five days a week at a set time, but skip weekends and/or holidays. How did that clock work? I don't think any other radio manufacturer of that era had radios with that kind of sophisticated timer clock forty or fifty years ago. The Zenith Memory Timer radio must have been fairly rare, as I've only seen two of them in my life so far--one was owned by a great-aunt of mine in the '60s, while I spotted the other one on ebay a couple years ago. My great-aunt got rid of her set years ago (I don't know for sure why anymore, but I think the radio still worked at the time while the clock had finally given up the ghost), which I think was a terrible loss since it probably would have been a collector's item or museum piece today. As I said, no other manufacturer of clock radios, that I know of anyhow, ever copied the Memory Timer design, probably because the clock may have been a one-of-a-kind design specially made for Zenith. :dunno:

Hey Jeff, I have a Zenith clock radio with memory timer. I never have quite figured out how it works. There is a switch on the on/off control marked "holiday". If I remember right the switch goes from off, to on, to auto, to holiday. I think the radio plays for like an hour at your "set" wake time and shuts off. So on the week-ends you just put it on "holiday". I can never get the snooze timers to work on my old tube clock radios. I wonder why that is???? Anyway..... My Zenith is from 1958, and I have seen quite a few on eBay. I'll look and if I find one I'll post it on here.

Some of the GE tube clock radios had a feature called Vari-larm...it allowed you to adjust the wake time either 30 or 60 minutes ahead or back by turning a front panel knob.