‘An Early Shortwave Transistor Radio’

I have always had, and certainly before I’d reached my teens, an interest in short wave radio - listening to broadcasts from around the world. Through the next few years, I quickly became a keen ‘DXer’, - as the hobby was known.

The invention of the transistor in 1947 revolutionised radios by introducing small, powerful and portable, hand-held devices that would even fit in a shirt pocket (or using an earpiece, under the blankets after bedtime!) 

The first, the Regency TR-1 was released in 1954 and was quickly followed by many other every cheaper models so that by the mid 60s and 70s, small transistor radios were everywhere! 

In 1961, my father got this brand new Trancel transistor radio. Made by Toshiba and still working (sort of!), it was by no means the smallest - it certainly didn’t fit into a shirt pocket. But it was portable, came with a little shoulder case (since unfortunately lost) and - most importantly - it could receive short wave!

I remember taking it on holiday abroad for a bit of DXing in August that year, and hearing - on what then was rather quaintly called the ‘General Overseas Service of the BBC’ (today’s ‘BBC World Service’) - that the East German Government had built a wall around West Berlin. Scary times!

Though still a common form of portable radio, transistor radios have today been partly superseded - but they are still the basis for all car radios. 

Part of the reason is the Web. Today’s smartphones, for example, are as small as the smallest transistor radios, and have access to apps which - so long as you have access to a mobile signal or Wi-Fi - can receive as many as 50,000 radio stations from all over the world with no reception problems, and with sound quality is as good as any local station. 

One I particularly like is ‘Radio Garden’ (see extra photo) that lets users listen to thousands of radio stations around the world - location represented by a green dot - by dragging and dropping a pointer over a 3D Google Earth interface.

http://radio.garden/