CBS Transistor Radio, USA 1956 - building crystal set from Encyclopedia - Trav-Ler, Sonora, Truetone скачать в хорошем качестве

CBS Transistor Radio, USA 1956 - building crystal set from Encyclopedia - Trav-Ler, Sonora, Truetone

In an encyclopedia, what's pictured there is supposed to be typical. You look up "orange" and you see a normal orange, not some giant county-fair prize winner the size of a watermelon. So what was the World Book Encyclopedia thinking? I first saw this CBS transistor radio in the World Book Encyclopedia as a kid. I remember what a clunky looking thing it was pictured there. I saw it because I was interested in radio and had looked up the subject under the "R's" in the encyclopedia. Now, even at a young age I was noticing how confused adults seemed always to be. What I knew to be a transistor radio was small, usually pocket size, made in Japan, and cute. What I saw in the encyclopedia was none of those. Was this another example of that adult confusion I'd been noticing? Were they in full possession of their faculties? Or were they just hopelessly out of step with the times? It was the '60s man... get with it! I remember thinking... I'd better keep my eye on these people. Adults, I mean. I'm not sure I can trust them. When I began to collect transistor radios years later, I thought again about that clunky transistor radio in the encyclopedia and thought it would be fun to find one of those radios for my collection. If it was even real. I didn't know. I looked it up again and noticed that the photo credits the picture to CBS Radio. Ah, so now that I'm thinking probably the guy who wrote the article worked for CBS or something. When I was a kid I didn't realize that encyclopedia articles were written by mere mortals. School teachers accepted the contents of encyclopedias without question so I just assumed those contents came down from the mount with Moses. So now I'm thinking maybe a CBS connection is the reason why the encyclopedia shows as a "typical" transistor radio something that was not typical at all, then or now. I don't know about you, but such things make me wonder what other ways corporations influence, or skew, the culture--and education in particular. That didn't used to be concerning, back when we generally, if naively, believed that companies acted honestly and for the benefit of all of us. But it's concerning now--now that corporations have adopted the neo-liberal belief that their only duty is to shareholders, with no duty at all to society at large. What a concept! It's even the law! The later incarnations of this style radio as we see from Truetone, Sonora, and of course Trav-Ler, use the strange Eveready #226 battery. But this CBS uses an even stranger 13-1/2 volt battery that attaches to a plug that is inside this radio. The tuning dial on this CBS has a polished gold finish while other branded versions of this "Power Mite" radio had dials that were dull gold, or silver. The first Trav-Ler radio of this type, the TR-250, also had the polished gold knob and the simple horizontal speaker slots as this CBS. Across the page, the encyclopedia showed you how to build a crystal set radio. And as a kid I did that very thing, building this radio as instructed.