[radiolee]

I started collecting transistor radios when I found a Zenith 500 at a garage sale that all the "hawks" had passed up and left sitting for .25. That radio pretty much started me on vintage audio collecting as I kept finding beautiful equipment at the sales and could not pass it up.

I love history and what fascinated me about transistors was the fact that the decision not to put tariffs on them is what eventually handed almost the entire electronics industry to the Japanese. The invention of the miniature tuning capacitor by Mitsui made the shirt pocket size transistor radio possible. Before that, the US made radios were what was called "coat pocket" radios due to their larger size.

There are a few good books on the subject, the best probobly being 'The Portable Radio in American Life" by Michael Brian Schiffer. It covers the entire scope of the development of the portable radio and the section on transistors is very good.

His main point in the book is that "cryptohistory", the rewriting of history by large corporations is rampant in the history of the portable radio, to the point that the CEO of Sony at one point went on TV claiming that Sony produced the first transistor radio, when in fact it was the Regency company and the TR-1. That radio was introduced in November 1954, one month before I was born(!).

The rest is history, as they say.

Lee