Mother Could Fix This Radio (Jan, 1948)
This is an interesting harbinger of the huge wave changes that occurred in the electronics industry in the 50 years after this article was published. What they’ve done here is essentially modularized an entire radio into plug and play components. Their reason for doing this was to make repair simpler, but now everything is designed that way so you can use standardized components and simplify assembly. If hundreds of different devices uses the same oscillator (or Ethernet controller for that matter) you can make them a lot cheaper.
Mother Could Fix This Radio
PSM photos by Robert F. Smith
YOU don’t need to know a coil from a condenser to fix this radio. Throw-away units, as easy to change as radio tubes, contain practically everything that might go wrong in the set. Six “canned” circuits with pronged bases, designed to retail in department stores at $1.85 apiece, replace the maze of wiring located in back of the dial of a conventional radio.
If the set stops working but the tubes remain lit un, trouble in one of these units is indicated. Taking the radio to the nearest store, the owner can find by experiment which replacement to buy. Or, if he prefers, he can buy a complete set of the inexpensive spares to have them on hand.
Color Identifies Parts
Parts may be asked for simply by color, without need of remembering names or numbers. A green “can” contains the oscillator circuit, a brown one the audio circuit; blue, black, red, and yellow identify, respectively, the first and second intermediate-frequency circuits, filtering and loading circuit, and automatic volume control.
First production model, introduced by the Cosmo Electronics Corp., New York City, is a five-tube home receiver. Also planned is an automobile radio for which any service station would supply the replaceable parts.