Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Raytheon was a leader in vacuum tubes, developing these tiny flat tubes during the 1940s for miniature applications. And after licensing the transistor from Bell Labs, soon became a leader in transistor development as well. They were the first commercial producer of transistors and by 1955 had nearly two million of them in use, more transistors than all other manufacturers combined.
And Raytheon was a transistor RADIO pioneer as well--one of the very first companies to produce a transistor radio. Many of the makers from the earliest days of the transistor radio no longer exist. Raytheon is one of those that, unfortunately, still does exist. Why would I say unfortunately? Well, have you seen what they are up to lately? I don't want to talk about it.
As I've mentioned elsewhere in these videos, like any collector I've sometimes been accused of "living in the past." It's an unfair accusation, of course, Liking old things doesn't mean I can't move freely between an appreciation for the old as well as the new. Anyway, for this video I am going to stay stuck in the past. Because that is the only way I can enjoy a Raytheon product--back in the day when they even MADE products. Things that made people's lives better. What they do to people's lives today is...well... I don't want to talk about it.
This T-100 model was Raytheon's first transistor radio to fit into a coat pocket and their first plastic transistor radio... and as such it is a favorite among collectors. It's from 1955 and has just four transistors. It is powered by the fat 9 volt battery type 246, or 1602, or 2N6, all of which look like the Burgess-brand example shown here on the left.
Earlier in 1955, Raytheon had produced their first transistor radio, the 8TP series. And this is just the SECOND commercially available transistor radio ever made. As you can see, it was a larger radio--and by all accounts it outperformed the only other transistor radio on the market at that time, the pioneering Regency TR-1. You'll find videos on the 8TP series, and on the Regency, on this channel.
These radios are hard to find. I always thought that was so because Raytheon was a Massachussetts outfit and would have sold more radios in the eastern United States, far from the flea makets where I found most of my radios. But actually, Raytheon's radio and TV division was in Chicago. So I guess they are hard to find not because they were so far away from me but because they just didn't make or sell that many of them. And from what I gather, collectors in Illinois and in Massachussetts haven't had much better luck finding them than any of the rest of us.
We see rather unusual construction on this radio. For servicing, the chassis is removed from the front, after removing the front panel. And battery access is from the rear through a cover that uses a metal latch to hold it on to the rest of the radio. Raytheon used this same layout for their next, and last, plastic-bodied transistor radio, the T-150.
As you see, we are looking at two different colors of this radio today, the T-100-1, which is the yellow and black model, and the T-100-5 which is ivory and gray. This radio came also in a T-100-2 which is ivory and yellow, a T-100-3 which is black and red, and a T-100-4 which is ivory and red. The Owner's Guide for this radio is dated December 1955, as is the Service Manual we'll look at in a minute. Inside that Owner's Guide we get some basic instructions for use along with an illustration to assist us with battery replacement. That illustration is actually numbered and has a small caption "Drawing No. 1329." Ha. Engineers! This was clearly put together by the engineering department and not the goofballs in marketing. In the Service Manual we also see a couple of illustrations of the parts layout. This manual talks about transistor servicing and says that substitution is the only reliable check for a transistor suspected of being defective, downplaying any sort of transistor testing methods. We get instructions for removing the chassis and for battery replacment, which is a slightly longer version of the battery instructions than are in the Owner's Guide and that use the same illustration. Then we see radio alignment procedures... and the schematic diagram. On the back is the replacement parts list.
The founding of Raytheon dates back to 1922. They began as the American Appliance Company and found success in the design and manufacture of radio tubes. They used the name "Raytheon" on these tubes which is a word construction meaning "light from the gods." Imagine back in those early days seeing the warm orange glow of those vacuum tubes bringing in radio broadcasts right out of the sky... well, light from the gods indeed.
One wonders about the "light from the gods" Raytheon rains down on people today--in distant wars that somehow never end. I don't want to talk about it.
Raytheon was a leader in vacuum tubes, developing these tiny flat tubes during the 1940s for miniature applications. And after licensing the transistor from Bell Labs, soon became a leader in transistor development as well. They were the first commercial producer of transistors and by 1955 had nearly two million of them in use, more transistors than all other manufacturers combined.
And Raytheon was a transistor RADIO pioneer as well--one of the very first companies to produce a transistor radio. Many of the makers from the earliest days of the transistor radio no longer exist. Raytheon is one of those that, unfortunately, still does exist. Why would I say unfortunately? Well, have you seen what they are up to lately? I don't want to talk about it.
As I've mentioned elsewhere in these videos, like any collector I've sometimes been accused of "living in the past." It's an unfair accusation, of course, Liking old things doesn't mean I can't move freely between an appreciation for the old as well as the new. Anyway, for this video I am going to stay stuck in the past. Because that is the only way I can enjoy a Raytheon product--back in the day when they even MADE products. Things that made people's lives better. What they do to people's lives today is...well... I don't want to talk about it.
This T-100 model was Raytheon's first transistor radio to fit into a coat pocket and their first plastic transistor radio... and as such it is a favorite among collectors. It's from 1955 and has just four transistors. It is powered by the fat 9 volt battery type 246, or 1602, or 2N6, all of which look like the Burgess-brand example shown here on the left.
Earlier in 1955, Raytheon had produced their first transistor radio, the 8TP series. And this is just the SECOND commercially available transistor radio ever made. As you can see, it was a larger radio--and by all accounts it outperformed the only other transistor radio on the market at that time, the pioneering Regency TR-1. You'll find videos on the 8TP series, and on the Regency, on this channel.
These radios are hard to find. I always thought that was so because Raytheon was a Massachussetts outfit and would have sold more radios in the eastern United States, far from the flea makets where I found most of my radios. But actually, Raytheon's radio and TV division was in Chicago. So I guess they are hard to find not because they were so far away from me but because they just didn't make or sell that many of them. And from what I gather, collectors in Illinois and in Massachussetts haven't had much better luck finding them than any of the rest of us.
We see rather unusual construction on this radio. For servicing, the chassis is removed from the front, after removing the front panel. And battery access is from the rear through a cover that uses a metal latch to hold it on to the rest of the radio. Raytheon used this same layout for their next, and last, plastic-bodied transistor radio, the T-150.
As you see, we are looking at two different colors of this radio today, the T-100-1, which is the yellow and black model, and the T-100-5 which is ivory and gray. This radio came also in a T-100-2 which is ivory and yellow, a T-100-3 which is black and red, and a T-100-4 which is ivory and red. The Owner's Guide for this radio is dated December 1955, as is the Service Manual we'll look at in a minute. Inside that Owner's Guide we get some basic instructions for use along with an illustration to assist us with battery replacement. That illustration is actually numbered and has a small caption "Drawing No. 1329." Ha. Engineers! This was clearly put together by the engineering department and not the goofballs in marketing. In the Service Manual we also see a couple of illustrations of the parts layout. This manual talks about transistor servicing and says that substitution is the only reliable check for a transistor suspected of being defective, downplaying any sort of transistor testing methods. We get instructions for removing the chassis and for battery replacment, which is a slightly longer version of the battery instructions than are in the Owner's Guide and that use the same illustration. Then we see radio alignment procedures... and the schematic diagram. On the back is the replacement parts list.
The founding of Raytheon dates back to 1922. They began as the American Appliance Company and found success in the design and manufacture of radio tubes. They used the name "Raytheon" on these tubes which is a word construction meaning "light from the gods." Imagine back in those early days seeing the warm orange glow of those vacuum tubes bringing in radio broadcasts right out of the sky... well, light from the gods indeed.
One wonders about the "light from the gods" Raytheon rains down on people today--in distant wars that somehow never end. I don't want to talk about it.
