Uploaded November 2023 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
I've collected transistor radios for a long time. The one we're looking at today would be considered by many to be the most "important" transistor radio I have. That rubs me the wrong way.
It's pronounced "Brown," they tell me. I don't mind saying it right, but that puts me in the position of saying it differently than every other English-speaker, because, they say Brawn. I don't like sounding like a smartass, or sounding wrong either. So this name seems like a source of unnecessary conflict. And while we're pronouncing things, there's this: Dieter Rams. He's the designer, the famous designer at Brawn, uh Brown who is known for his minimalistic approach to... damn near everything. And I'm sure I got his name wrong too.
OK, now that we've got the celebrity talk out of the way, let's talk about this radio as a RADIO, just like any other object I look at in these videos. Because.. remember. SOMEONE designed ALL the things I look at. Most of the designers toiled, as the saying goes, in obscurity. But that doesn't make their work any less important or valuable. We get the pleasure of seeing and appreciating their work, even if we don't know their names. The very notion of "designer this" and "designer that" is a recent phenomenon--if you didn't know. People today talk of designer handbags and designer shoes... and even collectors refer to the Raymond Loewy Studebacker and Virgil Exner's fins. We didn't used to talk about such things. They were just Studebakers and Dodges. We enjoyed the cars and the shoes and all that--we just didn't have to turn it into a celebrity thing. We're obsessed with celebrity these days. Even in politics, if a pop culture celebrity decides he or she wants to run for political office, no more qualified than ANY of the rest of us--they are automatically the front runner. And the media, obsessed with celebrity, just amplifies the problem. Oh, enough about that.
I do like this little Braun T3. It's clean lines are its strongest point. It's a two-band radio and there's a switch on the back for selecting the MW band or the LW band. Now, I don't speak German but I think this stands for ((in accent)) medium wave und long wave. Ja? ((yah))
It's said to have been the inspiration for Apple's iPod. But then the Regency TR-1 is said to have been the inspriation for Apple's iPod. I don't think Apple's designers would have come up with anything different had neither of those transistor radios ever existed. I know that's heresy, coming from a transistor guy like myself. But I'm also a design guy, if I may so self-designate..and that seems obvious. You might as well say the Braun from 1958 was inspired by the Regency from 1954. I don't think I would. But you might.
The case is like nothing I've seen on any other radio.. with this flap for easy access to the front. Usually a case for a transistor radio will have cutouts for the knobs and holes in front of the speaker to let the sound through. But there aren't any holes here, so I guess it's good that there's a flap. And you're going to need that flap open to tune it too, since there is no cutout for the tuning knob. If we're grading on "form follows function," as we have every right to since that's the classroom Braun has chosen to lecture in, I'd have to give this case an F. But maybe I just don't understand it. OK, I admit it. I DON'T understand it. And I don't know or understand what this "bunching" up is that appears on the bottom. This zipper pull I DO understand. It's a paper clip. Did what was originally on there break? Or was this case so minimalist that it had no zipper pull at all and a user, somewhere along the way, added a paper clip just so he or she could grip the damned thing.
Inside, the radio looks impressive enough. Solid and well built. This battery business looks like yet another mystery to me. There seems to be a battery compartment in the radio and another one up under the lid or back, each area holding two penlite batteries. I don't see how the batteries in the lid connect into the circuit. Or are they just some kind of spares? This seems like an overly fussy arrangement. The power source is already the part of any portable radio most prone to fail--a design approach that deals with that failure point would be a step forward. I don't think that's what we're seeing here. It looks like I'm missing a couple of those springs that help hold the batteries in. And what's with this battery clip? It looks like a 9-volt battery clip but sometimes those are used with battery holders holding penlight batteries. I don't know--something is definitely amiss here, Perhaps it has been modified along the way. But even that begs the question, why? Why would it be modified if it hadn't first.. failed in some way?
We find a circuit diagram tucked up inside the back with teeny tiny printing on it. Under a literal MICROSCOPE, I was able to see that the radio's power requirement is 6 volts, which would be delivered by 4 penlite cells.
I've collected transistor radios for a long time. The one we're looking at today would be considered by many to be the most "important" transistor radio I have. That rubs me the wrong way.
It's pronounced "Brown," they tell me. I don't mind saying it right, but that puts me in the position of saying it differently than every other English-speaker, because, they say Brawn. I don't like sounding like a smartass, or sounding wrong either. So this name seems like a source of unnecessary conflict. And while we're pronouncing things, there's this: Dieter Rams. He's the designer, the famous designer at Brawn, uh Brown who is known for his minimalistic approach to... damn near everything. And I'm sure I got his name wrong too.
OK, now that we've got the celebrity talk out of the way, let's talk about this radio as a RADIO, just like any other object I look at in these videos. Because.. remember. SOMEONE designed ALL the things I look at. Most of the designers toiled, as the saying goes, in obscurity. But that doesn't make their work any less important or valuable. We get the pleasure of seeing and appreciating their work, even if we don't know their names. The very notion of "designer this" and "designer that" is a recent phenomenon--if you didn't know. People today talk of designer handbags and designer shoes... and even collectors refer to the Raymond Loewy Studebacker and Virgil Exner's fins. We didn't used to talk about such things. They were just Studebakers and Dodges. We enjoyed the cars and the shoes and all that--we just didn't have to turn it into a celebrity thing. We're obsessed with celebrity these days. Even in politics, if a pop culture celebrity decides he or she wants to run for political office, no more qualified than ANY of the rest of us--they are automatically the front runner. And the media, obsessed with celebrity, just amplifies the problem. Oh, enough about that.
I do like this little Braun T3. It's clean lines are its strongest point. It's a two-band radio and there's a switch on the back for selecting the MW band or the LW band. Now, I don't speak German but I think this stands for ((in accent)) medium wave und long wave. Ja? ((yah))
It's said to have been the inspiration for Apple's iPod. But then the Regency TR-1 is said to have been the inspriation for Apple's iPod. I don't think Apple's designers would have come up with anything different had neither of those transistor radios ever existed. I know that's heresy, coming from a transistor guy like myself. But I'm also a design guy, if I may so self-designate..and that seems obvious. You might as well say the Braun from 1958 was inspired by the Regency from 1954. I don't think I would. But you might.
The case is like nothing I've seen on any other radio.. with this flap for easy access to the front. Usually a case for a transistor radio will have cutouts for the knobs and holes in front of the speaker to let the sound through. But there aren't any holes here, so I guess it's good that there's a flap. And you're going to need that flap open to tune it too, since there is no cutout for the tuning knob. If we're grading on "form follows function," as we have every right to since that's the classroom Braun has chosen to lecture in, I'd have to give this case an F. But maybe I just don't understand it. OK, I admit it. I DON'T understand it. And I don't know or understand what this "bunching" up is that appears on the bottom. This zipper pull I DO understand. It's a paper clip. Did what was originally on there break? Or was this case so minimalist that it had no zipper pull at all and a user, somewhere along the way, added a paper clip just so he or she could grip the damned thing.
Inside, the radio looks impressive enough. Solid and well built. This battery business looks like yet another mystery to me. There seems to be a battery compartment in the radio and another one up under the lid or back, each area holding two penlite batteries. I don't see how the batteries in the lid connect into the circuit. Or are they just some kind of spares? This seems like an overly fussy arrangement. The power source is already the part of any portable radio most prone to fail--a design approach that deals with that failure point would be a step forward. I don't think that's what we're seeing here. It looks like I'm missing a couple of those springs that help hold the batteries in. And what's with this battery clip? It looks like a 9-volt battery clip but sometimes those are used with battery holders holding penlight batteries. I don't know--something is definitely amiss here, Perhaps it has been modified along the way. But even that begs the question, why? Why would it be modified if it hadn't first.. failed in some way?
We find a circuit diagram tucked up inside the back with teeny tiny printing on it. Under a literal MICROSCOPE, I was able to see that the radio's power requirement is 6 volts, which would be delivered by 4 penlite cells.
