Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
Regency made the first commercially available transistor radio in 1954... Then what?
In 1955 and beyond, Regency adapted their TR-1 radio for other brands and models. Here they did so for the Bulova Watch people, a plastic-cased version to be sold under the Bulova brand, and this odd leather covered version for people who liked to own weird looking things. Regency did the same for the folks at Mitchell, making leather-clad versions in three different colors: called alligator, antique white, and suntan. Regency's own variant to the TR-1, the TR-1G, was issued in a cabinet with a different plastic formulation and with new colors. And their TR-4 version featured several internal improvements and still more knob and trim changes. Regency also made this Mantola for the B. F. Goodrich tire people. All of these were more or less adaptations of the original TR-1. And though all were called shirt-pocket radios, opinions varied on that score--especially if you asked the shirt. Did Regency make any smaller radios?
Just this one. But it's tiny, tuneful, and terrific. It also has only two transistors and can be heard only through an earphone. It's a stretch perhaps to call this a shirt-pocket transistor radio without the qualifier that it is something of a toy. Not only does it have no onboard speaker, it doesn't even have a volume control, there's just a crude on/off switch on the top.
The Regency XR-2 and XR-2A models were introduced in 1958, the same year that Philco introduced its T-3 "Veep" model, a similarly-sized, similarly configured radio that also played only through an earphone. There's a video on this channel all about this little Philco.
These two earphone-only radios... had something in common with this Emerson "Champion" model. That something being that these three radios... were the only American-built attempts at a NEW, smaller shirt-pocket radio in the FIVE YEAR GAP between the late-1954 release of the TR-1--and late 1959 when RCA and other American brands finally began to step up with shirt-pocket size models of their own. Really. FIVE YEARS.
Meanwhile, these were coming from Japan. That's Sony's 1957 TR-63 model next to Regency's TR-1,... and Sony's 1958 TR-610. There has been a lot of self-serving and spurious talk over the years about Japan's rise to dominance in consumer electronics. Most of such talk cited cheaper labor costs in the far east as the reason. But there was always something suspicious in that claim... something... incomplete, and misleading. I've dug into this in some previous videos--and the more I dig, the more I learn that what we've been led to believe... just doesn't add up.
Other than Emerson, and Regency, and Philco--who at least tried-- the rest of the American makers' inaction in this five year gap is remarkable. American companies made larger radios, to be sure, but not the shirt-pocket models people were really wanting. Just as the American car makers a decade or so later, in the 1970s, remained addicted to huge behemoths, while another country... again Japan... came along with somehow a better understanding of what Americans really wanted than the American corporations could manage.
And again with cars, we heard the 'cheaper labor' excuse. We heard how expensive our labor was here in the US and how the foreign maker had an "unfair" advantage. I believed it, of course. We all did. But now I wonder if what they were selling us with this logic was less about the truth and more about excusing their own failure to make for the public what the public wanted to buy. When we're talking shirt-pocket radios in the late 1950s, isn't it obvious that the reason American manufacturers failed in this competition is because for five years they literally failed to show up for it? Looking into these little radio histories as I've been doing on this channel has been a real eye-opener for me. It has cast more than a little doubt on the tales we've been told--and are STILL being told--by American business.
And doesn't the American brands' focus on larger radios with bigger profit margins sound a lot like those 1970s cars? Do you remember the argument? The auto makers flatly stated that they made more money on the bigger cars. They would only make smaller, more economical cars if they could get concessions from labor, or automate the factories--which is the ultimate concession from labor--unemployment. Most of the attempts they DID make at so-called "downsized" models were still huge--and hardly economical.
The constant excuses American manufacturers made citing foreign labor... with radios, and cars, reveals that their gripe was not so much with the foreign competition itself--which they let go basically unchallenged--but with American labor costs. Their enemy was domestic, not foreign. Rather than meet the foreign competition head on and do the best they could making what people wanted to buy, they were instead focused on...grinding labor--and willing to go to any length. . .
Regency made the first commercially available transistor radio in 1954... Then what?
In 1955 and beyond, Regency adapted their TR-1 radio for other brands and models. Here they did so for the Bulova Watch people, a plastic-cased version to be sold under the Bulova brand, and this odd leather covered version for people who liked to own weird looking things. Regency did the same for the folks at Mitchell, making leather-clad versions in three different colors: called alligator, antique white, and suntan. Regency's own variant to the TR-1, the TR-1G, was issued in a cabinet with a different plastic formulation and with new colors. And their TR-4 version featured several internal improvements and still more knob and trim changes. Regency also made this Mantola for the B. F. Goodrich tire people. All of these were more or less adaptations of the original TR-1. And though all were called shirt-pocket radios, opinions varied on that score--especially if you asked the shirt. Did Regency make any smaller radios?
Just this one. But it's tiny, tuneful, and terrific. It also has only two transistors and can be heard only through an earphone. It's a stretch perhaps to call this a shirt-pocket transistor radio without the qualifier that it is something of a toy. Not only does it have no onboard speaker, it doesn't even have a volume control, there's just a crude on/off switch on the top.
The Regency XR-2 and XR-2A models were introduced in 1958, the same year that Philco introduced its T-3 "Veep" model, a similarly-sized, similarly configured radio that also played only through an earphone. There's a video on this channel all about this little Philco.
These two earphone-only radios... had something in common with this Emerson "Champion" model. That something being that these three radios... were the only American-built attempts at a NEW, smaller shirt-pocket radio in the FIVE YEAR GAP between the late-1954 release of the TR-1--and late 1959 when RCA and other American brands finally began to step up with shirt-pocket size models of their own. Really. FIVE YEARS.
Meanwhile, these were coming from Japan. That's Sony's 1957 TR-63 model next to Regency's TR-1,... and Sony's 1958 TR-610. There has been a lot of self-serving and spurious talk over the years about Japan's rise to dominance in consumer electronics. Most of such talk cited cheaper labor costs in the far east as the reason. But there was always something suspicious in that claim... something... incomplete, and misleading. I've dug into this in some previous videos--and the more I dig, the more I learn that what we've been led to believe... just doesn't add up.
Other than Emerson, and Regency, and Philco--who at least tried-- the rest of the American makers' inaction in this five year gap is remarkable. American companies made larger radios, to be sure, but not the shirt-pocket models people were really wanting. Just as the American car makers a decade or so later, in the 1970s, remained addicted to huge behemoths, while another country... again Japan... came along with somehow a better understanding of what Americans really wanted than the American corporations could manage.
And again with cars, we heard the 'cheaper labor' excuse. We heard how expensive our labor was here in the US and how the foreign maker had an "unfair" advantage. I believed it, of course. We all did. But now I wonder if what they were selling us with this logic was less about the truth and more about excusing their own failure to make for the public what the public wanted to buy. When we're talking shirt-pocket radios in the late 1950s, isn't it obvious that the reason American manufacturers failed in this competition is because for five years they literally failed to show up for it? Looking into these little radio histories as I've been doing on this channel has been a real eye-opener for me. It has cast more than a little doubt on the tales we've been told--and are STILL being told--by American business.
And doesn't the American brands' focus on larger radios with bigger profit margins sound a lot like those 1970s cars? Do you remember the argument? The auto makers flatly stated that they made more money on the bigger cars. They would only make smaller, more economical cars if they could get concessions from labor, or automate the factories--which is the ultimate concession from labor--unemployment. Most of the attempts they DID make at so-called "downsized" models were still huge--and hardly economical.
The constant excuses American manufacturers made citing foreign labor... with radios, and cars, reveals that their gripe was not so much with the foreign competition itself--which they let go basically unchallenged--but with American labor costs. Their enemy was domestic, not foreign. Rather than meet the foreign competition head on and do the best they could making what people wanted to buy, they were instead focused on...grinding labor--and willing to go to any length. . .
