DESCRIPTION:
This beautiful table radio was built one year after beginning of WWII in 1940. It reminds us of the early work of Ray and Charles Eames, who extended their pioneering furniture designs in molding plywood to radio cabinets, they built for a number of manufacturers, in particular Emerson, Zenith and many others, including Philco. There is however no positive evidence for this connection. The radio has several unusual features: It uses the new rare loktal tubes introduced by Sylvania mainly for car radios and portables in 1939, it has one extra RF amplifier, and a large two-loop antenna, that Philco called a "super aerial system". A sticker on the back says: "BUILT TO RECEIVE TELEVISION SOUND, The Wireless Way when used with Philco Television Picture Receiver, without Wires, Plug-in, or Connections of any kind". To reduce costs of the then new and expensive early television sets, some of them had no audio or speaker. To hear TV sound a radio with TV or phono jack had to be used. Philco did it wireless, and built an AM transmitter into their TV's, broadcasting the intermediate frequency of the TV's AM audio section, to be picked up by any radio, that had enough sensitivity. Unfortunately they got it wrong, since the transmitter frequency was later fixed at 8.25 MHz, outside the range of this radio's police band. The radio is therefore overdesigned, much to the joy of then buyers and today's collectors. Let's watch it playing, including an mp3 player, first transmitted at 1.6 MHz and then connected directly to a newly installed phone plug. The radio will be documented and sold on eBay by radio-antiks.