[HN Gopher] The First Transistor Radio
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The First Transistor Radio
Author : samizdis
Score : 56 points
Date : 2024-10-05 08:32 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| whyage wrote:
| Great story. I'm struck by the design similarity to the first
| iPod models, with the large wheel moved to the center.
| forinti wrote:
| It's quite similar to my Grandad's Spica ST600 (started
| production in 1964).
|
| They both had a leather case, too.
| robertclaus wrote:
| Very applicable to today's AI market moving so quickly. NVIDIA's
| recent open models are effectively the same as TI building a
| Radio to sell transistors.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A fine story about American capitalism!
| Jun8 wrote:
| The video linked in the article looks so quaint, but it was only
| 70 years ago!
|
| The ladies putting in the components work pretty fast, about 5s
| per component for smaller ones, so about 720 cph. Top speed pick
| and place robots can now do 200k cph
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick-and-place_machine) so ~300
| or so faster. This increase pales _considerably_ to any other
| aspect of such a process, eg cost of a transistor.
| rmason wrote:
| Got a transistor radio as a birthday gift as a young boy, near as
| I can remember it would have been early sixties. It was a Zenith
| and didn't look a lot different from the one in the picture. The
| Detroit music scene was vibrant back then on AM radio Also late
| at night got introduced to blues on a Chicago station and was
| never quite the same.
|
| After fifty years the radio was still going strong and I gifted
| it to my Dad so he could listen to his beloved Detroit Tigers
| when a game wasn't on cable. I wanted to reclaim it when he
| passed away but we could never find it in his room. I'd like to
| think someone is still using it.
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(page generated 2024-10-05 23:01 UTC)