Transistor Radio

Episode 7, 2012: Transistor Radio

NAT (Archive Audio): Calling Dick Tracy. Here is the next thing in size to that wrist-watch radio Dick has been sporting in the comic strips.

Joe Bidwell: I’m Joe Bidwell. I have a small collection of early transistor pocket radios. The jewel of the collection is this Regency TR-1, which was the first transistor radio ever produced, back in 1954.

As part of my collection, I really treasure it because it does represent the beginning of it all. This particular radio has a very low serial number, so I’m wondering, was it one of the first ever made?

Tukufu Zuberi: Hi, I’m Tukufu Zuberi, and I’m really excited about doing this story here in Los Angeles. The transistor radio came around at a really important time. Rock and Roll was coming out, parents were not really into the music the children were listening to. The transistor radio was the invention of personal entertainment.

Joe: Well, the first radio I bought, myself, when I was twelve years old, is the Motorola.

Tukufu: So you used to pop this baby in your pocket?

Joe: Get on the school bus and have Buddy Holly playing, or something like that. It was, it was very cool. This is the Regency TR-1 – the cream of the crop. This was the first model of transistor radio ever produced. And, in 1954, this sold for $49.95.

Tukufu: Wow. So that was a pretty penny back then, huh?

Joe: A lot of money, yeah. And there were about a hundred thousand made.

Tukufu: But Joe tells me that after over fifty years, he doesn’t think very many still survive.

Joe: It has a very low serial number.

Tukufu: Oh, really.

Joe: Inside under the battery compartment.

Tukufu: All right. 2-0-6-7. It’s a low serial number. What do you want me to find out for you?

Joe: Is it the oldest one in existence?

Tukufu: And Joe has a second question, how was this little company able to turn the world of consumer electronics upside down?

Joe: I know that transistors were just starting to be manufactured in 1954. How did they start making transistor radios? I don’t know that.

Tukufu: Sounds fair enough. I’ll see what I can find out for you and try to get back to you, just stay tuned, man.

Could I be looking at the oldest surviving transistor radio? It’s sleek. The dial is cool. It has these little red triangles – I wonder of that’s for style or something else.

Then you got a little information here. Transistor radio. Model TR-1. I have some other numbers over here. 4-4-5. 300. 4-3-3.

I don’t know how to date this radio, or even if there are other earlier versions out there. My office has already told me that Regency changed names in 1989, and they couldn’t track down early records. But they found perhaps the next best thing, a collector who knows everything Regency. Graphic designer Eric Wrobbel has a radio collection numbering more than 4,000 - including some very early Regency models.

Eric Wrobbel: I know what that is. That’s a Regency TR-1. That’s the first transistor radio model ever made. It allowed people to have radios that were their own. And so, radio then came out of the parlor, where it was a family enterprise, and into the hands and pockets of individuals, especially teenagers.

Tukufu: The transistor radio hit at the same moment as another generational earthquake: rock n’ roll. Out of range of their parents, teenagers could listen to the new music, like Elvis Presley, who made his radio debut in the summer of 1954 with “That’s Alright, Mama.”

Eric: It helped us teenagers at the time become more alienated than we would have been otherwise.

Tukufu: So, it facilitated the alienation of children. Okay.

Eric: Yes, of an entire generation.

Tukufu: Alright.

Eric: Ruined the Baby Boom. Right here.

Tukufu: So, why did they make this radio?

Eric: It goes back to 1947, when the transistor was invented at Bell Labs.

Tukufu: Eric explains how scientists at AT&T’s Bell Labs invented transistors for their phone system to replace fragile vacuum tubes.

Eric: With the transistors being many times smaller than a vacuum tube, it presented an opportunity.

Tukufu: Bell labs licensed the invention to Texas Instruments, who approached various other consumer electronic companies to manufacture the radio. But in 1954, not everyone was interested in what Texas Instruments wanted to make.

Eric: General Electric, RCA and the likes of them, they didn’t see the point in a little radio. They thought, well, it’s a novelty item. They’ll sell a few. They also owned tube factories.

Tukufu: Okay.

Tukufu: All right. They weren’t motivated.

But one company was, an upstart less than ten years old called Regency.

Eric: Regency was a company that made signal boosters and things like this. They felt that if they could make a radio, a full radio with a speaker in it and everything, that would fit in a shirt pocket, that they would sell millions.

Tukufu: While the giants of American industry seemed uninterested, Regency did have competition from a Japanese team which few Americans had heard of.

Eric: Which was then known, not as Sony, but as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Limited. But Regency, with nothing else to lose, went at it full force.

Tukufu: Eric says the scrappy Regency team was under serious pressure. Texas Instruments wanted the transistor radio on shelves in time for Christmas. Just four months later the first TR-1s rolled off the line. It took Sony until 1957 to bring their pocket transistor radio to the U.S. market.

Eric: The salesmen for Sony that went to show this radio at tradeshows and to prospective dealers found that it barely fit, couldn’t really fit, into their shirt pockets. And they actually, Sony had shirts made specially with extra large shirt pockets because that was the point.

Tukufu: So you’re telling me they beat out Sony?

Eric: Yes.

Tukufu: Over 140,000 TR-1’s were made in that first run. Eric thinks less than 10,000 still exist. Is Joe’s the earliest that is still around? Eric also has a low serial number TR-1 – the lowest he knows to exist.

OK, so mine’s is 2-0-6-7 and yours?

Eric: 3-4-0-7.

Tukufu: Ah ha. So mine was made before yours, but they were probably made around the same time.

Eric: Perhaps a week apart.

Tukufu: Eric says that Joe’s is the lowest serial number he’s ever seen. But he cautions that the serial number isn’t the whole story. It’s important to confirm that the parts are period, too. Eric has a suggestion on who might be able to help.

Eric: The founder, John Pies, has a son that lives somewhere near me. I’m not sure. Out here in Southern California somewhere. If you could find him...

Tukufu: How about this? Don Pies. Not only is he is the son of the founder of the Regency Electronic Company, but he also followed in his father’s footsteps and is a mechanical engineer himself. Don knows every part of the TR-1, from front to back, and has a story for each.

© 2012 Oregon Public Broadcasting all rights reserved Don Pies: One of the parts that I personally always loved about the Regency radio, I loved the brass dial. It’s just beautiful. Very simple, very...elegant. This was a very expensive part of the radio to make.

Tukufu: Don says the brass dial is just one part in dating the radio to the TR-1 first run.

This is an interesting dial. I mean you know, you have these little red points in-between these sequences of three numbers. What’s going on?

Don: Sure.

Tukufu: Don explains the triangles represent the darker side of the TR-1.

Don: In the early fifties, we were exposed to the Cold War and having bomb shelters was a big concern.

NAT (Archive Audio): No matter where they go or what they do, they always try to remember what to do if the atom bomb explodes right then. It’s a bomb! Duck and cover!

Don: So if you had a nuclear event, after you did your duck and cover, you would turn on your radio, and you would dial to one of these triangles and try to figure what the heck’s happening.

NAT (Archive Audio): In a nuclear attack, keep tuned to your local radio station. It will keep you posted where fallout is taking place.

Don: These Civil Defense symbols were one of the early marketing strategies that Regency had.

Tukufu: So the radio fits the profile of an atomic era invention, but Don needs to open it up to pinpoint its exact creation day. Under the microscope Don sees the mark of a very early Regency electrical component known as a capacitor.

Don: Oh, my god! The other end is extremely porous. I see a greenish color from probably corrosion. It’s completely consistent with the first generation Regency TR-1’s. They had problems with this one. They had to replace it early on. And when I say first generation, within the first few weeks, definitely in the first month.

Tukufu: Have you ever seen one older than this one?

Don: I haven’t physically seen it. I know of one. And I’ve seen pictures of one.

Tukufu: Oh, really? Who has it?

Don: The son of Ed Tudor, who was the President of Regency.

Tukufu: All right, from one son to the next. This whole thing is becoming a family affair. I’m now going to talk to the son of the president of Regency.

Clay Tudor: This is my dad.

NAT(Edward C. Tudor): The industry was completely caught napping…

Clay: My father, Edward C. Tudor, was uh, by training an electrical engineer.

Clay: He was always a bit of a risk taker and loved to accept a challenge.

Tukufu: And, Clay says, a man who knew promotion.

Tukufu: What do you got?

Clay: This radio has an inscription on the back. And it says…

Tukufu: I’m going tell you, we talked to collectors and experts on the Regency TR-1. And none of them had seen one as old as yours.

Joe: Really? You’re kidding.

Tukufu: This was the oldest one we could find until…

Clay: Well, um, my radio was given to me by my father. It has an inscription on the back. It says, “Serial number 2.”

Tukufu: So you have number two!

Clay: Indeed I do. “Presented to Edward C. Tudor in recognition of your leadership during the development and production of the world’s first transistor radio. October 28th, 1954.”

Tukufu: So yours is number two.

Clay: It’s the mama bear.

Tukufu: So how does it make you feel to have number two?

Clay: Well, I’d like to, uh, have had number one.

Tukufu: Um hmm.

Clay: But, my father, being the astute, uh, marketer that he was, realized that he needed to present the first transistor radio to the head of Texas Instruments.

Tukufu: We got our answers from the people who were related to those who were responsible for building the radio.

Joe: That’s amazing. All those connections. No kidding. I think it’s exciting, you know, to know that this was a part of history. And this is obviously a key part in personal entertainment.

Tukufu: It’s not only a key part, it’s transformative.

Joe: It’s nice to have a piece of history.