Talk:Transistor radio

FM band?

The article currently says of the early transistor radio:

"These radios, of course, were monaural and limited to the FM band."

If memory serves, this is a typo for AM, no? Opus33 03:23, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oh, my goodness gracious. <blush> Yes, of course. How could I have ever said that? Those early transistors were just barely capable of handling signals in the 550-1600 kilocycle broadcast band and couldn't have done squat at 88 megacycles. (Note period reference to "cycles."). Dpbsmith 13:43, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Kilocycles

Transistor radios could not have possibly received the "530-1600 kilohertz AM broadcast band" in 1954, as there was no such thing as a hertz in 1954. It is like saying that Captain Cook landed in the State of Hawaii.

After correcting the detail that the low end was 540, not 530, I see only four basic ways to phrase this accurately.

• the 540-1600 kilocycle AM broadcast band, i.e. don't explain kilocycles at all;
• the 540-1600 "kilocycle" AM broadcast band, i.e. hint at an explanation
• the 540-1600 kilocycle (as the kilohertz was then called) AM broadcast band, i.e. explain what a kilocycle was;
• the broadcast band, the range of frequencies now designated 540-1600 kilohertz i.e. avoid the obsolete term but make it clear that the modern term was not used.

We can't use a phrasing like "what is now known as the 540-1600 kilohertz broadcast band," because it now extends up to 1700 kHz.

I'm trying the simplest alternative (no explanation). Dpbsmith (talk) 23:34, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I tried a compromise - keeping User:Dpbsmiths version while adding a footnote. —QuantumEleven | (talk) 18:02, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

While the compromise seems find, it's a bit silly to compare this to the State of Hawaii. The State of Hawaii is a political entity so of course Captain Cook could not land there as it didn't exist. However kilocycles or kilohertz are just units and whichever one is used is largely irrelevant. It's probably better to say 540-1600 kilocycles but the reverse isn't wrong in any way. It's a bit like saying Captain Cook didn't travel thousands of kilometres because he didn't know what a kilometre is. Units are simple and permenant things. The fact that they weren't used at a time doesn't mean they are wrong Nil Einne 15:21, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Is this really necessary? As a relevant comparison (unlike the hawaii example above), it would be like if the US adopted the SI system, and then it would only be correct to use imperial units for measurements from before today. Your height before today was 6 feet, but after today you measure 182cm. --Philip Laurence (talk) 00:28, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Battery Used

After reading the article I got the impression that the TR-1 used a standard 9V battery. It actually used a special 22-1/2 volt battery (and in the advertisment you can see it mention the battery). Upon rereading the article it isn't clear whether it is talking about the TR-1 or transistor radios in general when discussing the type of battery used. Perhaps this could be made clearer.ЬṛḶ

N1. I'll fix that. Billyshiverstick (talk) 16:33, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Vagueness in History section

The History section, while very informative and good contains a number of statements that are quite vague and need to be clarified:

Texas Instruments was behind the Regency transistor radio.

What does 'behind' mean? Produced, marketed?

In Japan, big firms like Matsushita and Toshiba who might have been expected to push forward with a transistor radio acted more like their big American counterparts.

Do we really need a sentence on something that didn't happen?

It was Sony, then a small, aggressive concern, who produced Japan's first transistor radio,

What does 'aggressive' actually mean in this context?

Most radios also had earphone jacks and came with single earphones affording middling quality sound reproduction.

While the sound wasn't great, how would we Verify this? Was the sound quality poor for the era?

Teenagers, with an earphone plugged into one ear, immersed in a private musical world, became a familiar sight, and one that made Ray Bradbury's description of "seashell radios" in his 1953 Fahrenheit 451 seem prescient.

Hate to be a party pooper, but bring up Bradbury out of the blue doesn't seem very encyclopediac and verges on OR.

To consumers familiar with the earphone listening experience of the transistor radio, the first Sony Walkman cassette player, with a pair of high-fidelity stereo earphones, would come as a revelation.

What does 'revelation' mean in this context and is talk of a cassette player relevant to the article? Ashmoo 01:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I edited the section to make it more formal PipOC 03:05, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Contrary to current popular myth (while acknowledging that winners write history), the rock & roll boom of the late 50s still wasn't the dominant force in popular music, certainly not in the 50's, nor even in the 60's. If one looks merely at Billboard's top singles chart, you might get that impression, but the non-rock adult market still held sway in popular music for a couple of decades after Elvis. In other words as this article is concerned, "pop" music should be used, in addition to people of all ages listening to their pocket transistor radios, instead of giving some Forrest Gump/American Grafitti impression that the youth market was all encompassing in the American music sphere of the era in question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.125.236.127 (talk) 16:15, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

i need a summary on the 1950's transistor radio...!!!

aight,will heyy i really need a summary on this so could you plz email me a summary on the transistor radio,at danieboo@ctvea.net —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.243.144.100 (talk) 21:06, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Strange English

Under "History" the second sentence clumsily starts "There are nothing to the title of the first industry to produce practical transistor radios..." I can't even figure out how to re-write that - somebody else please try. Paulburnett (talk) 21:26, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Decline

The section "Transistor radio decline" is very US-centric. While manufacture in one country in the world may have declined and eventually ceased in 1970, there are other countries! Baska436 (talk) 10:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Inflation

Wikipedia provides an inflation template to dynamically adjust for inflation. Using this template means that the article will always be up to date. This article had static text inflation. They were already six years old, and quite out of date. So I replaced them in the article with the template. Nick Beeson (talk) 13:45, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Brilliant, thanks Nick! I must learn how to use this template! Billyshiverstick (talk) 16:53, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Vaccuum tubes are voltage amplifiers?

The article stated 'Transistors are current amplifiers, while tubes are voltage amplifiers' but tubes aren't voltage amplifiers, they are transconductance devices, their output current is proportional to their input voltage. As are bipolar and FET transistors, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transconductance. Hence I have removed this statement. Jon the id (talk) 12:41, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

5 Transistor Radio Diagram

The red lines pointing to transistors are incorrect. The device between the two audio transformers is an electrolytic capacitor and not a transistor.

It is USSR GT108 transistor in top-hat style case - the other output transistor looks like Japanese replacement. BTW, there are two GT309 transistors without red lines: first near the ferrite antenna and second wrapped in white insulation near the blue IF can. --89.164.174.168 (talk) 13:06, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

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Missing mass market "one transistor" radios

As a young man, I received a one transistor pocket radio in 1962. It was at a lower price point (one transistor) than previous designs, and more importantly had a low current draw on the 9-volt battery (~5mA vs ~50mA for superhetrodyne designs). An example of the reflex circuit it used is in http://www.techlib.com/electronics/reflex.htm. It used a high Q ferrite loopstick for tuning and a 2SA type germanium transistor as both RF amplifier and audio amplifier, Diode detector, recovered audio voltage acting as an AGC, audio output transformer. As transistor price and power usage declined and bandwidth increased the ball went back to superheterodyne designs. Shjacks45 (talk) 04:18, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

True say. It would help if you could remember the name and model number of yours, or find a link to an article we can cite. Billyshiverstick (talk) 16:36, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Chryslyer imperial all transistor car radio audio sound news clip.ogg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 05:52, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Article improvements

Hi all - chunks of this article are lifted word for word out of sources, which is plagiarism, and some of those chunks have been cut and pasted wholesale to other wiki articles, which is a no-no. I'm going to trim the detail in this main article, and leave it in the sub articles ie: Regency TR-1, and write this up as a story in our own words, keeping the facts from the citations, of course. Please don't wholesale revert my work, just make it better. cheers Billyshiverstick (talk) 16:40, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Interwikis

The English-language article is about portable transistor radios. Elsewhere, like de:Transistorradio, or nl:Transistorradio, it's about transistor radios in general, not limited to portables. Should the wikidata entry be split into two entities or not? Retired electrician (talk) 21:08, 30 January 2023 (UTC)