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Transistor Radio Turns 50
theodp writes "Before the iPod, there was the Regency TR-1. Fifty years ago Monday, tiny Indianapolis-based I.D.E.A. partnered with TI and shook the world with the first pocket-sized AM radio, so impressing IBM chief Tom Watson that he provided a $49.95 (roughly $345 in current dollars!), four transistor TR-1 to each of his senior managers to kick-start the company's transition from valves."
For a neat one page history of the shirt-pocket sized transistor radio along with a picture of the TR-1, go here: transistor radio
http://www.busyweather.com/
UltraSparc IV: 66 million transistors
:-)
Pentium IV Prescott: 125 million transistors
Power4: 170 million transistors
So how many transistors are in the TR-1?
4
For everything else, there's vacuum tubes. (Or diodes, depending on your radio set.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Must be using one for his web server.
12:50 - press return.
Heh. Funny to think that at one time, a transistor radio would be as ostentatious as the little white iPod headphones.
Of course there were no portable headphones.
Just saying.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Valves = tubes in Brit-speak ...
The germanium transistor was first demonstrated privately at Bell Labs Dec. 23, 1947, by William Shockley and his team. However, production problems delayed its practical use. Until it was perfected, the invention was kept secret for 7 months and no patents were filed until 1948; the first public announcement was June 30, 1948.
Nowadays, it's more like the patent was filed 5 years ago out of thin air, first public announcement was 24 months ago. Product is sold with some bugs and patches/fixes/recalls were made in the following 24 months.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Wow. What struck me most about that article is how much inflation there's been in 50 years. Thats 700%! I don't know about you, but to me that's just insane.
Victory or awesome!
And I think the IC's I was working on 35 years ago were produced from one inch wafers and were one transister or diode per chip which were mounted in an IC to replace a vacuum tube or valve based circuit.
But that's progress. Now you can have a 3 Ghz pentium that will put out as much heat as that old vacuum tube based technology ever could.
If you look at the expanded pic of the "shirt-pocket radio", you also see a Zenith hearing aid, which has a shape (especially considering the location of the earphone) surprisingly similar to an iPod...
"How many people on slashdot have been alive this long?"
And are still virgins?
You say $345 with an exclamation mark as if that's a lot of money for a portable entertainment device. How much do you think an iPod costs? Or a Rio?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
And I, for one, want to welcome the arrival of our new iPod Overlords!
-Ocelot Wreak.
"I figure you're here 'cause you need some whacko who's willing to stick his finger in the fan. So who are we helping?
I can remember fishing with my dad as we listened to the Cardinals play by play on his. He won it in a national sales contest and I might add was quite the object of jealosy for having it.
If I remember right his had 9 transistors. At that time when you bought one it would tell you how many transistors it had. The more transistors the better the "quality" and the higher the price. 9 was pretty much top of the line for portables.
The Sony's where considered cheap and low quality. (and they fell apart so very easy.) If you wanted a good one there was only one way to go. RCA. Though the people from Phillips and GE had their contenders.
The RCA's had honestly better quality speakers etc so there was a difference in quality (over the cheap Japanese imports). His also took a single 9 volt battery and a small V/U meter to tell you signal strength. Even heard my first Beatles tune on it.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Tom Watson that he provided a $49.95 (roughly $345 in current dollars!), four transistor TR-1 to each of his senior managers to kick-start the company's transition from valves."
I wish I had specific references of this, but it was a practice by some portable radio manufacturers to add extra transistors just so they could market as being a *12 transistor* radio. I've seen a couple of these where they only used two poles directly from the battery i.e. as diodes. I've seen one case where they just added extra ones before the speaker which did reduce over all sound quality. Sorta like they added an extra unnessicary smoke stack to the Titanic, cause more is better.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Just for nastalga sake, I still have my grandfathers "Walkman" It's from the 50's when plastics were the big thing. It's bright red, pre-transistor AM radio about the size of a gradeschool lunchbox. It uses 3 sets of batteries. It used a 1.5 volt filimant battery, a 22.5 volt battery (about the size of a nine-volt) and the big high voltage B battery of 67 volts. It does not use an AC cord.
Going transistor improved battery life and permitted smaller size. Due to the smaller size and early speaker technology, the early transistor radios were known for their tin sound. They mostly sounded like a set of headphones on a desk. Earphones (mono in the ear) were common as was simply holding the radio up to the ear like a cell phone.
Being an early geek in those days meant taking apart some of the early transistor radios. (grade shool age) Deceptive marketing was common. Just like the standards for car audio watts (RMS, Peak, per channel, all channels together, un distorted, 10% distortion, max power at any distortion etc..).
Transistor count was the big seller.. The more the better. I remember taking apart a 9 transistor radio only to discover that only 3 of the transistors were used. 3 of them had all three leads stuck in the same hole. 3 of them were used as diodes with two leads in one hole and the other lead in another hole. It was a simple regenerative reciever, not a superhetrodyne with some semblance of fideliety.
In marketing, not much has changed in the years.
My old printer claims X number of pages ink yeild for it's color cartrige at 15% page coverage. The new printer claims it does more pages with it's high yeild cartrige. In the fine print it does 1.5X more pages but at 5% coverage. In my book, that's less yeild. The new cartrige is over twice the price. Carts refrenced are the HP 23 and the HP 78. I can get two of the former for about $45 or one of the latter for $52. Needless to say, my old printer is the primary color printer, not the new one. Thanks to the truth in advertising, they do specify how the page yeild was calculated, but they have gone a long way to imply comparing page count of these two cartridges is accurate, when it is deceptive. Do you want the 600 page count cartrige or the 900 page count one? Come on guys. point out the 600 count is with 15% coverage and the 900 count is with 5% coverage. (page counts rounded off for example. See HP's website for stated page yeild claims.
The truth shall set you free!
I remember the prestige accorded to the transistor count in those early radios; it was bragging rights for us kids on the playground to have the radio with the higher count. Trouble was, the manufacturers caught on to this early and soldered in fake parts to raise their total. I remember a picture in an electronics mag showing the bottom of the printed circuit board in one radio, showing all three leads of each of a couple of the transistors soldered together in as one big connected blob.
'which has a shape...surprisingly similar to an iPod...
...you mean a rectangle?
Because in much of the USA in those days, drugstores were among the few stores permitted to do business on Sunday.
Seven-Elevens had tube testers as late as the mid-Seventies.
rj
A Transistor radio mini-history has a picture of an early transistor circa 1947. From the website:
...USA research scientists of Bell Laboratories, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain managed, in December 1947, to invent a solid state device that they called THE TRANSISTOR. They succeeded in creating a completely new amplifying device just by adding a second contact point to the already popular CRYSTAL DIODE based on a piece of germanium crystal with a pointed "cat's whisker" touching its surface. In 1956 in recognition for their extraordinary work they were awarded the Nobel Prize. (Can't tell from the website if this one pictured was the very first one invented by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain of Bell Laboratories.)
Transistor inventors Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain were awarded a Nobel prize for their work in 1956. It's amazing how something so primitive went on to revolutionize the electronics industry.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest