1950s TWO-TUBE pocket-size radio RARE 'Tiny Tooner' pre-transistor - collectornet.net
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ส.ค. 2024
- Subminiature vacuum tubes. Developed during the 1940s, these little tubes were quickly supplanted by transistors in electronics devices. But they did appear in a few, rare devices highly prized by collectors for their rarity and their quirky technology.
They appeared in this, the Belmont Boulevard radio from 1947. That's a good looker and there is a video on this channel all about it. And those little tubes appeared in this Emerson 747 model as shown in this striking ad for it that ran in the early-to-mid 1950s.
And they appear in this, the cute, strange, delightful "Tiny Tooner" radio.
The date on this is unknown but it is clearly somewhere in the early 1950s. It says on the back "Manufactured by Acousticraft Corp., Chicago, USA, Patents applied for." It was held together by melted plastic. Really. Where other devices might have screws holding it together, this one had plastic pins. In final assembly, the back was placed over these three pins and the end of those pins melted down to hold it together. Cheeeesy!
Anyway, somewhere along the way those melted ends fell off and the thing is open. It doesn't want to stay together at all, like one of those "crash-up cars" I had as a kid. So let's look inside. Well, first, on the back there's a pocket clip. Handy. Inside the back? Nothing. And here's the circuit board. Wow. Almost nothing was made in those days with actual printed circuit boards. And this is one of them. One of the nothing. One of none. You know what I mean. Primitive.
As you can see, the rest of this just comes apart and we can look over the chassis up close. The tuning coil and the cute little dial pointer is seen here. The subminiature tubes, one stacked over the other. It looks like one of the tubes leads is just hanging loose. It wouldn't surprise me if that's all it ever did. And the battery compartment. Like all tube radios, it needs one power source to power the radio and another one for the tube filaments. The radio uses a 22-1/2 volt battery. This is the same battery as used in the Regency TR-1, the world's first transistor radio.
And the other battery, for the tube filaments, well, they call for a "miniture" flashlight battery, which looks like it would be a AA penlite battery. Schoolteachers and book editors may wish to note that "miniature" is spelled wrong.
But now, smart guy, we come to a problem with this explanation. If this radio is supposed to be held together more-or-less permanently with melted plastic pins, how are you supposed to change the batteries? Nowadays things ARE THAT disposable, where there are single-use products made with batteries permanently installed where the whole thing is thrown out when the batteries die. Back in the 1950s we weren't yet that cavalier with our environment, so there is no way this was permanently put together so you couldn't change the batteries.
So getting it back together, I see that the pins hold it all together, but not this top part where the batteries go. There's a a lip on the part we will now call the battery cover and that cover has a bit of friction there that would hold it on. Not much, but I think that explains how this thing is supposed to hang together.
Here's the on/off switch. A simple lever switch. On/off. No volume control, just on or off.
Acousticraft, the maker of this little gizmo, made earphones and hearing aids and it would be one of their earphones that would plug in the side here so you could hear this little radio. Into the two pin jacks labeled "phones." In case you haven't noticed by now, there is no speaker in this thing. Nor was there a speaker in that Belmont Boulevard I showed you. The other pin jack on the side is labeled "Ant." for antenna and you aren't going to hear much out of a radio like this without an external antenna. This little bunch of wire came with this radio and that served as the antenna. There's no alligator clip on that wire for attaching it to a bed frame or water pipe in order to improve reception as was done on crystal radios but there may have been one at that time. Or a short length of wire like this may have been sufficient for this little guy, since it does have two tubes in it.
The nameplate on this little radio is a piece of foil. Cheesy and wonderful at the same time! It's got a great Tiny Tooner logo design on it and this shows this isn't just some product they issued out of the back of the engineering department like some items you see seem to have been. No, they had the art department in on it too, with obvious high commercial hopes for this little gizmo.
The Tiny Tooner. One of the odd and interesting little detours on the journey from this... to the pocket radio.
love this channel, ever since i stumbled upon it by chance i went back and watched a lot of videos and still doing so, hope everyone have a good day.
Thanks!
The tube leg is not just hanging but wired to the extremely fine wire from the transformer.Its likely the plate of the tube
Look closely. The supposedly free tube lead is actually soldered to a tiny wire to an audio transformer. Also, tacked on copper traces do not a printed circuit make.
You really do come up with some interesting radios.
You must have one heck of a collection‼️
📻🙂
Let's bring 'em back!
Soon rather many will desire miscellanies of the nostalgic back,
to escape (at least partially) the near-future horrors a promising.
Nice radio.
I like the tuning system. Saves a bulky and expensive variable capacitor.
Is it missing a dial or something?
The miniature tubes used in this radio were also used in hearing aids.
At the end of the second world war, they were used to build proximity fuses for anti-aircraft shells.
When the projectile gets near an airplane it explodes. These tiny tubes got subjected to massive g-forces when fired.
I need the battery cover for one of these, in maroon. I have the two piece Air Patrol model wherein the tuner goes on your wrist and wires go back to the main unit and battery holder. It is also two tubes, one in the remote tuner, one in the main unit.
Amazing. Built in Chicago USA.
Chicagoland was chock full of radio. So that little bit of wire was bout all thats needed then tks fer looky see.
What a cute little radio! I'm wondering if it's a regenerative/reflex design, or if it's just a detector-and-amplifier circuit.
Very nice
Think Shango066 has that Emerson radio. Cool little radio
...over my lifetime, I've owned 4 of those Emerson hybrid radios, including the one I have now.
What about using Loctite to help put it back together.
Does it work?
Why is this video subtitling in Dutch?
I have no idea. That's nothing we control on this end. We provide no subtitling with our videos and any subtitling originates elsewhere. Likely it's some setting on your end.
Wow such weird looking radios I've seen you new videos the past week. I can't believe how cheesy the old looked it really didn't have any nice styles and most of these super sensitive plastic and weird colors yellow on top of red yuck that kids are going to play with this babies? It wouldn't withstand a drop in the crib plastic was not made out of bakelight like the big radios back then.. you wonder what the manufacturers were thinking when they design created and evidentially built these units.. wouldn't you like to hold the sounds bring back a designers and builders of these radios? I asked him why did they built it this way or that way. And didn't you have some fashionista whipping up some dandy looking radios instead of these cheap looking China made early radios 20-30 years ago when the US manufacturers got them to build anything for the kiddies.. man we came a long way better radios and better designs. Thanks I'll be looking at your other types of radios you have in your menu thanks again stay well and stay safe and stay this never ending pandemic keeps stressing us. Thanks again for great videos bye