Texas Antique Radio Club - www.gvtc.com/~edengel/TARC.htm

Texas Radios

For more than a quarter of a century that extended from the 1930s until the close of the tube era and beyond, Texas entrepreneurs manufactured or assembled a string of radio brands in cities and towns all around the state. Most were made in relatively small quantities and only for a short time. All but a few are little remembered.

The city of San Antonio was home to Radioette, Sferics and (naturally) Alamo brand radios.

Dallas had the most manufacturers, including Dalbar, Aldingson, Talk-a-Radio, Davis, Curtis Mathes and the probable best known of the early brands, the Watterson. Although production consisted of only two engineering prototypes by Texas Instruments in Dallas, the world=s first all-transistor production radio, the Regency, had its beginning in Texas.

Houston produced Curtis Mathes as well as the Texan, about which little other than the name is known. Only an advertisement in an early Houston telephone directory attests to the existence of the Texan. There are no surviving examples of the radio itself.

Smaller cities added to the total. Athens was home to a large Curtis Mathes plant that made radio, radio phonograph, and television receivers. Rangeaire radios, which were integrated into home intercom systems, were made in Cleburne. The Texas manufacturers generally produced their radios to fill niche markets: the Rangeaire and Talk-a-Radio were built as receivers in conjunction with kitchen/home intercom systems; Aldingson made coin operated radios for hotels; Curtis Mathes aimed for the upper end of the market, emphasizing fine cabinetry. Watterson=s single most collectible model is the Texas Centennial receiver, created as a tie-in to the state=s 100th birthday bash in 1936. Davis was a high fidelity brand for the audiophile.

And then there was the Sferics radio from San Antonio.

The O=Connors were a ranching family with extensive holdings in land and cattle in Victoria and Refugio counties of south Texas as well as part or sole interest in several banks. One of the third generation, Dan Brahman, decided that the part of the world he was concerned with, south Texas, needed an inexpensive storm warning radio. So in the >60s he set up a radio manufacturing company in a San Antonio storefront which lasted only about six months.

The company produced a tube-type Bakelite radio, model SF-1-1, with a normal enough looking AM radio dial on the left side of the cabinet. On the right side was a large square meter with an area labeled ASevere@ and marked in red at the extreme right of the meter pointer=s travel.

To operate as a storm alert, one would tune above the broadcast band and switch to Alert mode, at which time the radio would mute. The right side meter provided a relative indication of the severity of static from lightning. The radio emitted a warning tone when the meter indicated static in the ASevere@ range.

A current owner of a Sferics receiver completes the description of the radio=s operation: AYou then switched the radio mode to listen. My observation has been that by the time it reaches >Severe= you are getting blasted enough with thunder and lightning that you probably don=t need this to tell you!@

The unusual name ASferics@ is a play on the word atmospherics.

Prior to establishing the Curtis Mathes Corporation in 1957, the founder and namesake had considerable experience selling or manufacturing home appliances. Mathes started a distributorship for Philco products in Amarillo before moving his operation to Fort Worth prior to World War II. After the war his company became Mathes Coolers, manufacturers of window fans, evaporative coolers and room air conditioners. Mathes and the company succeeded well with his line of cooling apparatus. They were marketed first in Texas, later throughout the western United States.

In 1957 Mathes made another corporate name change. Within a few years the newly established Curtis Mathes Corporation was producing phonographs, radios and both color and monochrome television receivers.

A former TV dealer, Bruce Vaughan has recently published some recollections of a visit to the Curtis Mathes Corporation=s plant in Athens, Texas in the mid-=60s. He provides interesting insights to production and marketing at Curtis Mathes (Bruce Vaughan, Radio Service in the Golden Age, Episode 11, Electric Radio, Number 155, April, 2002).

Vaughan reports that the television and radio chassis assembly area was only a very small part of the plant=s floor space, most of which was used for cabinet manufacturing, offices and product storage.

He watched as each chassis, after being punched and drilled, was passed down a human-powered assembly line on a wooden cradle for workers to fit transformers, tube sockets, filter capacitors, and the like. Each worker had a large drawing highlighted in bold colors showing parts to be fitted at that stop.

After a trip down the component line and the wiring line, which Vaughan states was Anot much longer than a basketball court,@ the chassis was complete.

It was then carried into a small, RF shielded screen room where the chassis was connected to external components such as speakers and given a final alignment.

During Vaughan=s visit to the Athens plant, Curtis Mathes himself announced to the select group of dealers including Vaughan that C-M Corporation had solved a marketing dilemma by introducing a truly convertible color TV. Vaughan notes that during that period, many potential TV customers were reluctant to invest in either another black and white or color receiver. Consumers expected that vastly improved color TVs were on the immediate horizon. Many had chosen to postpone buying a new set until the expected improvements were introduced.

Mathes had a plan to offer a monochrome TV that could be converted to the latest color model at a later date. His company would guarantee a fixed price for the conversion. Thereby, all objections to buying a new TV today would be put to rest.

He proposed to build every Curtis Mathis black and white and color TV chassis the same size with the same number and placement of controls. When a customer was ready to upgrade his Curtis Mathes monochrome receiver to an improved color model, his dealer merely ordered a C-M color TV in an inexpensive, painted metal cabinet. He would slide out the old chassis and replace it with the new color works. The old chassis was now reinstalled in the black metal box and offered for sale on the dealer=s floor as a >rebuilt= TV.

AUnfortunately,@ Vaughan reports, Athere must have been a few details that needed further attention. That was the first and only time I heard of the revolutionary >color convertible= TV sets.@

Another Texas-made electronic innovation was infinitely more successful and caused a permanent revolutionary change in the use of radio.

Because of the quantities of small transistor radios produced in the Far East over the years, many people have the mistaken impression that the Japanese developed and produced the first transistor radio. Actually, the first transistor radio was developed by an engineering team at Texas Instruments in Dallas in 1954. Amazingly, this first laboratory model was designed, tested and constructed from concept to a finished, operating breadboard model in under six days!

Management at Texas Instruments in the early >50s pursued a vision to make their company a major manufacturer and supplier of transistors for the electronic industry.

Just three years after a Bell labs team had invented the transistor in 1948, Texas Instruments paid Bell a $25,000 license fee to become one of the first companies in the United States to manufacture transistors. Economies of scale were hardly begun when Texas Instruments began making transistors. In June 1952, Scientific American said that transistors from several manufacturers were now on the general commercial market. AThe competitive rush to market has now begun,@ the magazine reported. AOne distributor quoted a price of $30 for a transistor.@

At TI, research and development on the transistor devices themselves went hand in hand with other projects that would make use of the transistors in useful, practical circuit designs. Texas Instruments was highly successful in developing commercial uses for their line of solid state components, including not only the pocket transistor radio but the electronic calculator as well.

Late on a Friday afternoon in May, 1954, the TI General Manager, Pat Haggerty, called electronic engineer Paul Davis to his office to assign a special project. Davis was well experienced in electronic engineering, earning a BSEE at Southern Methodist University, serving in the Navy during World War II as a radar officer and working as a design engineer for Watterson Radio Manufacturing Company in Dallas before joining Texas Instruments in 1948.

Haggerty got right to the point. Davis was being assigned a special project to develop an all transistor radio. Particularly, this was to be a receiver that was capable of being produced in large quantities that would be needed for a mass-produced radio. The engineering feasibility model was to be demonstrated to an established radio manufacturing company with the assurance that TI would be able to produce and supply all needed RF transistors for production.

Davis= initial goal was to develop a breadboard model transistorized radio that was operational over the full AM broadcast band with sensitivity and volume equal to small tube radios of the day.

Haggerty gave Davis assurance that all the resources of the Semiconductor Department would be available for support. Davis was invited to choose anyone at TI to be assigned to the

development project. He chose three crack engineers for the team, all proven experts in the design and development of transistor electronics.

Mapping out strategy for the job in his head, Davis envisioned that with hard work the team could produce the radio in perhaps four to six months. Even that schedule would scoop the competition by perhaps a year or more. He asked when the breadboard model was needed. AI don=t need it until next Wednesday, when our potential client will be here,@ Haggerty asserted. Less than six days until the deadline, Davis rushed downstairs to get his team organized in order to begin work that very evening on the theoretical and mathematical ramifications of the job.

Saturday morning, a team member went out and bought the smallest tube-type radio he could find, an Emerson. From it, the team intended to remove and use unusually small parts not readily available from normal parts suppliers. Particularly, they intended to immediately scavenge the minuscule tuning capacitor and speaker.

Several serious problems were overcome by the team in exhausting marathons over the next few days. Transistors were specially prepared and selected that would still have gain at 1862 kHz - the sum of the upper frequency limit of 1600 kHz and the intermediate frequency of 262 kHz. AQuiet@, low internal noise transistors showing a better signal to noise ratio were installed in the radio=s front end. A team member designed tiny, low impedance IF transformers for the radio. Instability and parasitic oscillations in the amplifier circuits had to be overcome.

By Monday night of the following week, the team had a fully transistorized radio operating on a breadboard. The original radio utilized eight transistors: one mixer, one local oscillator, two IF amplifiers, one detector and three in the audio amplifier.

Years later, Davis reflected on the work they did: AI suppose that, since we were engineers used to designing new circuits week in and week out, at that time it seemed more or less like another breadboard completed. I wish we had fully realized the significance of the project and had taken photographs and had kept more detailed records.@

Tuesday afternoon, after tweaking the circuits once again, Davis and the team took the finished breadboard model to their pleased manager and breathed a collective sigh of relief. Although they could not know then, there was to be another bombshell for the team.

The following Saturday morning Davis got another visit from General Manager Pat Haggerty. Davis relates, AHe again stated how much he appreciated our efforts on the radio and added that he felt it was a pretty good design. In fact, he said, that it was good enough that he wished to show it to some people at an important out-of-town meeting he was to attend on the coming Tuesday.@

Davis continues, AOf course, he could not take along the radio in its breadboard configuration - it would need to be neatly packaged in an attractive case for easy transport and demonstration.@

Haggerty dropped the bomb. He told Davis he would appreciate it if they could reconfigure their design into a neat package in time for him to take it with him next Monday evening.

Davis again rounded up the team for a weekend marathon. They decided to package the radio in the original Emerson case they had bought the week before. They had to design and build even tinier IF transformers and fabricate a special, miniature switch in order to get all the components in the restricted space of the former Emerson.

By Sunday night, the newly packaged radio was working properly. On Monday, they finished final alignment and Haggerty left with the radio in his luggage for the out-of-town demonstration.

In June, the team learned that Texas Instruments had made an agreement with the I.D.E.A. Corporation of Indianapolis to produce the radio in quantity. Through June and July, Davis and an augmented team experimented with ways to simplify the radio for production. Ultimately, a four transistor model, designated the Regency TR-1 resulted. The radio went into production in October, 1954, and thousands were sold before Christmas at a price of $49.95. Demand outstripped supply for several months. About 100,000 were eventually produced.

To mark this electronic milestone, a Regency TR-1 is on display at the Smithsonian in Washington.

The evidence left by Texas radio manufacturers is usually faint. Some makes are recent enough that an original engineer, plant owner or members of the founding family is still around to remember. Other brands owe what little notoriety they have to yellowing diagrams in Riders or early Howard W. Sams publications. Collectors fondly preserve a few examples of radios that were generally not too plentiful to begin with. They remain a small but intriguing part of the technological history of the state of Texas.

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Watterson

Dalbar

Aldingson

Talk-a-Radio

Davis

Texas Instruments (Regency)

Texan

Sferics

Alamo

Radioette

Rangeaire

Curtis Mathes

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