Transistor Radio

"Hey John, do you want to take a ride?"  It was the day before my 14th birthday, and my father invited me to go to town with him in his Ford truck. This seemed like a great idea to me as he would often stop at the A and W root beer stand, or perhaps drop by and 'check the freezers' at the Dutch Girl Ice Cream factory on Willamette Street, where his buddy Gene Gustafson, who owned the place, would offer up all the ice cream we could eat! Dad, and the men that worked for him at Dirlam Refrigeration, were always welcomed as they kept the plant going when there was a breakdown of one of the compressors.

However, on this day, October 2, 1957, Dad pulled into the parking lot at Graybar Electric on West 6th Avenue, where he purchased many of his supplies for his business. After saying hello to Ray Brown, who was behind the counter, Dad said, "Ray, can you please show us the new Motorola." Ray reached up on the shelf behind him and grabbed a small box, and then placed it on the counter in front of us. Inside was a new transistor radio made by Motorola, which was a small grey metal box (about 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches) with a gold colored plastic carrying handle that housed a ferrite rod antenna. I soon found out that this remarkably small radio would be my very own, when Dad said, "Happy birthday, John." I later found out that Dad had been following the development of these little gems, and he had already placed an order with Ray several week prior!

I was the first kid on my block to have a transistor radio. Why? Because they were expensive, and only a father that had built radios and his own amateur radio station, as a teenage boy in the early 1930s, was likely to have such an appreciation for this new invention. The price wasn't going to prevent him from purchasing this gift for his son's birthday. Dad would live vicariously through my enjoyment of my new Motorola, frequently asking me to check the reception of the local stations, KUGN, KERG, and KORE, as we drove around town, and he would beam when I showed one of my friends my new radio.


The day after my birthday, I heard a frightening news event on my transistor that would change history, and play an important role in my career choice as a scientist. Namely, the Soviet Union, our arch enemy in the Cold War, successfully launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. It was the size of a beach ball, weighed only 185 pounds, and took about a 100 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. We were taught in school that the U.S. would become a world leader in space technology, and therefore in missile development. This success of Sputnik I, and the failure of the first two U.S. launch attempts, proved otherwise. After this initial shock, the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race began, leading up to Project Apollo and six manned moon landings between 1969 and 1972.

However, of more immediate concern to me this early October was which team would win the World Series. The New York Yankees or the Milwaukee Braves? My team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, had finally beaten the Yankees in 1955, but in 1957 they finished third in the National League standings. That meant I would be a Braves fan for the World Series. I could never root for the Yankees, who were the favorites each year. All games were played during the day, so I was able to listed to short portions of Game 2 between classes at school on my birthday. The Braves evened the series at one game each with a 4 to 2 win. The following week, I was able to follow Games 5, 6, and 7 at school, but only during lunch hour. One of the teachers at Jefferson Junior High told me that she would confiscate my radio if I listened to any game in the hallways between classes. The fear of losing my new birthday present was far too great to risk it. The Braves won the series in dramatic fashion with a 5-0 shutout in Game 7.  Hank Aaron, who would eventually go on to break Babe Ruth's career home runs record, did his part by hitting .393 with three homers and seven RBI's.

In the present day of MP3 players, it's perhaps difficult for young folks to realize what an amazing invention came on the scene in the 50's with the advent of the transistor radio. The typical portable tube radio was about the size and weight of a lunchbox, and contained several heavy batteries. The use of transistors instead of vacuum tubes as the amplifier elements meant that my Motorola was much smaller and required far less power to operate. It was also more shock-resistant than a tube radio, and it had an 'instant-on' operation, since there were no filaments to heat up.  It's interesting to note that on my previous birthday in 1956, and unbeknownst to me, that William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain, of Bell Labs, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 'for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect'. This really was a big deal, as this technology would ultimately lead to the development of small computers, as well.

News and sports were given limited air time in the late 50's. Now that the World Series was over, the main attraction was listening to music on my Motorola. The top songs were played repeatedly, and I was very excited to hear 'Honeycomb' by Jimmie Rodgers, 'Wake Up Little Susie' by the Everly Brothers, 'Jailhouse Rock' by Elvis Pressley, 'Chances Are' by Johnny Mathis, 'Rock Around the Clock' by Bill Haley and the Comets, and 'That'll Be the Day' by Buddy Holly and the Crickets, just to name a few. And amazingly, I could be at the lake, or the beach, and not just at home, when I was hearing this new 'rock and roll' music come on the scene. This was an exciting time; thanks Dad!

The antenna was housed inside a plastic "carrying handle"