[Sandy G]

This was the National Company of Malden, Mass., that made amateur radio gear. One of their sets, the HRO, was made from 1935, essentially unchanged until 1964. It was a magnificent anachronism, to change frequency bands in it, you had to change one of a set of coils. There were 2 coils for the broadcast band, I think to get all the coils they offered you had to get 7 or 8 of 'em. It was only after WW2 did National make the power supply intergral w/the rest of the radio, before that, you had a separate power supply-the "doghouse", along w/a separate speaker. In 1965, National went from the obsolete to the space age & offered the HRO-500-which was a totally solid state design. Solid state had been used for cheapy shirt-pocket radios for several years by then, but nobody had tried it for a "serious" radio that picked up from 500 KC to 30 MC-the whole shortwave spectrum. And there WERE some problems-but surviving HRO 500s are prized by collectors. Sadly, National couldn't compete against the onslaught of the Japanese, sputtered on thru the Seventies, & died in the Eighties.