Customised search for historical information

18 October 2009

On this day in history: First commercial transistor radio announced, 1954

In December 1947, Walter Houser Brattain and H. R. Moore demonstrated a germanium transistor to colleagues at the Bell Labs by using it as an amplifier. This was the culmination of a collaboration between Brattain, John Bardeen and William Shockley, who jointly received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention. Their development of the transistor owed much to the work of the Austro-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld who had patented the field effect transistor in 1925, although his invention was not given a commercial application.

In the early 1950s, various companies started producing prototypes of all-transistor radios but their performance was not on a par with vacuum tube based models. Nevertheless, in May 1954, Texas Instruments developed a prototype transistor radio, which they hoped that established radio manufacturers would be interested in developing. TI Executive Vice President Pat Haggerty hoped that the radio would create a market for the company's transistors.

None of the major radio manufacturers showed any interest; however, the Regency Division of Industrial Development Engineering Associates (IDEA) of Indianapolis, Indiana showed interest. They decided to go into partnership with TI to develop the radio. The result was the Regency TR-1, which was announced on 18th October 1954.


The TR-1 went on sale the following month priced at $49.95 - quite a sum in those days, but enough for the venture to be profitable. The AM receiver was also expensive to run since it was powered by a 22.5v battery. Nevertheless, the novelty appeal of the TR-1 resulted in over 100,000 being sold.

Related posts
Edison patented the phonograph: 19th February 1878
First live radio broadcast of a soccer match: 22nd January 1927
BBC Radio first broadcast the Greenwich Time Signal: 5th February 1924

3 comments:

Dale Ritter said...

The advancement to the transistorized circuit moved technology forward, and research is now exploring even smaller scales, of atomic imaging for construction of even more refined nanoelectronic devices.
Recent advancements in quantum science have produced the picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model imaging function, in terms of chronons and spacons for exact, quantized, relativistic animation. This format returns clear numerical data for a full spectrum of variables. The atom's RQT (relative quantum topological) data point imaging function is built by combination of the relativistic Einstein-Lorenz transform functions for time, mass, and energy with the workon quantized electromagnetic wave equations for frequency and wavelength.

The atom labeled psi (Z) pulsates at the frequency {Nhu=e/h} by cycles of {e=m(c^2)} transformation of nuclear surface mass to forcons with joule values, followed by nuclear force absorption. This radiation process is limited only by spacetime boundaries of {Gravity-Time}, where gravity is the force binding space to psi, forming the GT integral atomic wavefunction. The expression is defined as the series expansion differential of nuclear output rates with quantum symmetry numbers assigned along the progression to give topology to the solutions.

Next, the correlation function for the manifold of internal heat capacity energy particle 3D functions is extracted by rearranging the total internal momentum function to the photon gain rule and integrating it for GT limits. This produces a series of 26 topological waveparticle functions of the five classes; {+Positron, Workon, Thermon, -Electromagneton, Magnemedon}, each the 3D data image of a type of energy intermedon of the 5/2 kT J internal energy cloud, accounting for all of them.

Those 26 energy data values intersect the sizes of the fundamental physical constants: h, h-bar, delta, nuclear magneton, beta magneton, k (series). They quantize nuclear dynamics by acting as fulcrum particles. The result is the picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model data point imaging function, responsive to keyboard input of virtual photon gain events by relativistic, quantized shifts of electron, force, and energy field states and positions.

Images of the h-bar magnetic energy waveparticle of ~175 picoyoctometers are available online at http://www.symmecon.com with the complete RQT atomic modeling manual titled The Crystalon Door, copyright TXu1-266-788. TCD conforms to the unopposed motion of disclosure in U.S. District (NM) Court of 04/02/2001 titled The Solution to the Equation of Schrodinger.

SANDY said...

I sure remember my first transistor radio. Each of us kids had one with our own set of ear plugs. We'd take them to bed to listen to music on one of 2 stations before falling asleep. Long long ago in a planet far far away. lol

Sandy

Borkiman said...

Dale: Thank you for that comment. It is a rare thing when a comment is longer and better informed than the original post.

Sandy: I remember my first transistor radio, and I too used to listen to it in bed.