In the first entry on this blog, about the Casio TV-1000 micro TV, I noted how the micro TVs of the 1980s in some ways foreshadowed today’s smartphones. No station memories.īut what you did get was extreme portability at a time when such a thing seemed miraculous. What you got for your $39.95 in 1961 was a tiny AM radio with a tuning wheel, a volume wheel, and a headphone jack. I suspect that if you bought one of these in 1961 it would have been the most technologically advanced device you owned. Buying one of these radios would have been very much like buying a smartphone today. The $39.95 price for the radio in 1961 translates to about $312 in 2013 dollars. Depending on how old you are you may not think of transistor radios as particularly antique devices but consider that this radio has most likely celebrated it’s 50th birthday. He quotes an advertisement in a Pittsburgh newspaper for the TR-730 dated November 1961, which places this radio squarely in the Kennedy Administration. Most of what I know about the TR-730 I found on James Butter’s Transistor Radio Design site. I think I would prefer a larger wheel like the TR-1 has.īut all things considered, I’m very amused that this 50 year-old radio still works. I can tell you that the tuning wheel on this TR-730 is a bit sticky so it’s not great for fine tuning. That’s 1350AM WARF, a sports station that basically saturates this part of Northeast Ohio with it’s signal. I’m not sure what this thing sounded like in it’s heyday but it certainly works now. Upon closer inspection I was surprised to find that it was actually a very small, very old Sony transistor radio, the TR-730.Īfter we brought it home I was eager to hear it working…And this is when we discovered, via this note we found in the battery compartment, that it needed an odd 4.5v battery.įortunately, equivalent batteries are still made (apparently they were used in cameras) and after a trip to Battery Bob’s site I had a PX21 in hand and the TR-730 fired right up. But then, just as I was about to give up, I spotted what I thought at first was an electric razor in a leather pouch. One day recently I had made several passes of these shelves and had decided there was nothing I particularly wanted to buy. It’s so packed with items of all types that you have to make several passes before you’re sure you’ve seen everything. I’ve discussed before how there’s this mish-mash section at Village Thrift where you have the possibility of finding anything and everything.
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