Personal Portable Electronics: The Beginning
It’s not difficult to pinpoint the
time period when personal electronics first appeared. It happened just prior to WWII. Before then electronics consisted only of
radios and phonographs neither of which was either very personal or portable. By 1938 it was possible to build radios that
could be carried and used as a personal set, but few manufacturers were selling
them. Magazines such as Popular Science
and Popular Mechanics featured several “build it yourself” articles for those
wishing to have a radio primarily for use by one person. Radio manufactures pretty much ignored the
idea.
In 1938 the new low power radio
tubes supplied by the Sylvania Corp. allowed most radio manufacturers the
opportunity to design personal radios. Very
few did. One of the few was the Majestic
Radio Company. In 1939 they built,
advertised, and sold a very small (for the time) radio that could be carried on
the shoulder like a purse. It used three
low power tubes and was self contained (radio, battery, antenna, and speaker in
one unit). No one could argue that the
radio was anything other than a personal radio.
Majestic advertised the radio as
similar to a camera, which at that time most people understood as a small box
handing from a shoulder strap. The camera
comparison was copied by a number of competitors including RCA, DeWald,
Admiral, and General Electric. By 1940
these radio manufactures and many others were producing and selling “camera
style Personal Radios”. Many of these
personal sets were battery powered and intended for use by one person often
while walking. Thus personal portable
electronics was born.
Since their cases were made of pressed cardboard few, 1939 Majestic “Personal Radios” survived.
