Where did all this stuff come from?

Today we have smart phones, tablets, MP3 players, and lots of other portable electronic devices too numerous to name.  A few years ago we also had pagers, personal data assistants, portable CD players and others.  It would seem that all these portable marvels must have originated with the ubiquitous transistor radio of the 1950s.  But, that’s not exactly correct.  It really started much earlier.  As far back as the early 1920s some speculators suggested that a portable radio might be possible.  It  was possible and happened quickly.  In 1924 Zenith introduced the first fully contained (radio, batteries, antenna, and speaker) portable radio.  It was suitcase sized, but it was portable.  In 1925 the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) offered their portable model 24 Radiola and Westinghouse and others followed with similar self contained portable radios.  Thes portable frenzy did not last long. 

All of the first generation portables were expensive compared to their non-portable brethren.   They also were heavy.  Battery consumption was high and they were very bulky, too bulky to carry and play.  Some improvements came with time, but public interest waned.  Slowly but surely the number of portable radios sold dropped year by year.  So, that by 1937 not a single major radio manufacturer offered a battery operated portable radio.   

There was still a market for portable radios.  But, it was apparent that the radio buying public wanted improvements in battery life, weight, and reliability.  That didn’t happen until 1938.  That year Sylvania introduced a new line of low power tubes.  Less costly batteries also became available.  The result was a portable radio renaissance.  By late 1939 just about every significant radio manufacturer was offering a portable radio.  But they were still big.  Most were still the size of a small suitcase.  To offer something more compact required further reduction in the size of tubes, batteries and other radio parts.  Fortunately that didn’t take long.

In 1939 RCA introduced a line of miniature tubes and compact batteries to power them.  This led to the small personal portable radios available prior to WWII.  RCA’s model BP-10 set the standard.  Others copied the idea.  The figure below shows an RCA BP-10 with several prewar personal sets from other manufactures.   Although popular at the time, they were still not very good on battery life, size and reliability.  Until the invention of the transistor they were about as small and portable as a radio could get.  Unfortunately, WWII stopped the production of all radios for civilian use.   The three year war hiatus cooled the public interest in personal sets.  After the war RCA, Emerson, and a few others tried to market battery portables, but they didn’t sell well unless they could also operate from house current. 

In 1954 a small company called Regency offered a transistor radio just in time for the Christmas sales season.  Although it was not a great radio it sold well and sparked a revival of public interest in radios that could be played while carried, i.e. personal portables.  As they say, the rest is history.  After transistor radios there were portable tape players, pagers, calculators, leading to all the modern portable devices we now can’t do without.