One of the books for sale was "Zenith Transistor Radios," written by Norm Smith, who happened to be at the show. At each show and swap, a People's Choice Award is presented through the votes of ...

Nobel trio How did the transistor semiconductor get to the portable radio? Long before ‘Quality as a Strategy’ became the mantra at Sony, Zenith was vending high-performance, almost ...

The transistor-radio story brought back an equally sharp memory. After suffering through the 1950s as a Pirate fan, I was doing graduate work in Reykjavik, Iceland, listening to the Series on ...

Transistor radios, developed just after WWII, became wildly popular in the midcentury era and enabled Japanese makers like Mitsubishi, Sony, Realtone and Toshiba to survive and thrive.

Your particular Zenith (500B) was the second Royal model and was produced after 1955. It was a very expensive radio, selling, as you said, for well over $50; this at a time when gasoline cost only ...

It’s a long story. Like every other kid of my generation, I grew up on AM radio. I listened to a small red Zenith transistor radio welded to WHB-710 AM, the biggest station in Kansas City, Mo.