[Boatanchors] First American Transistor Radio

Sat, 29 Mar 2003 18:54:33 -0600

That honor belonged to an American company in Indianapolis called
I.D.E.A. that announced the production of the Regency TR-1 on October
18, 1954.

The radio is on display at the Smithsonian.

Michael Schiffer in The Portable Radio in American Life, (Tucson, 1991)
wrote that this was "the world's first shirt-pocket portable radio--with
transistors" (page 176). The Regency may have been the first commercial
transistor radio but Paul Davis has described his development of the
first working transistor radio at Texas Instruments in May 1954 (see the
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 1993, pages 56-80). In Germany,
Robert Denk may have produced a transistor radio in February of 1948.

Raytheon was first to mass-produce transistors in 1952 and the first to
produce a commercial product with transistors, the hearing aid. Amateurs
used transistors to design experimental radio circuits as early as 1950
and Western Electric engineers made a wrist radio in 1952 with 4
transistors as a gift for Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould (Schiffer
page 174). The Regency claimed in its advertisements that it was the
"world's first pocket radio" but Schiffer has chronicled the earlier
history of pre-transistor portable radios, such as the Operadio 2 in
1923, the "first stand-alone portable" (page 72), the Zenith Companion
in 1924, the "first boom-box advertised nationally" (page 75), and the
Belmont Boulevard in 1945, the "world's first commercial shirt-pocket
radio" (page 162) using the subminiature tubes developed by Norman Krim
at Raytheon in 1939.

Gerry

Collecting & Restoring since 1959
Gerald Steffens P.E.
Rochester, MN  

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Duane Fischer,
W8DBF
Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2003 6:15 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Boatanchors] First American Transistor Radio

	What American company marketed the firs consumer transistor
radio and what
year?	

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