Regency TR-1

Previously, transistors had only been used in military or industrial applications, and the TR-1 demonstrated their utility for consumer electronics, offering a prescient glimpse of a future full of small, convenient hand-held devices that would develop into calculators, mobile phones, tablets and the like.

Previous vacuum tube-based pocket radios had been unsuccessful; some companies made their own transistors and did not want to use TI's.

Many Americans were building bomb shelters, and the company expected that they would want a pocket-sized radio for emergencies.

[1][3] TI was not interested in manufacturing radios; its goal was to increase demand for its transistors so that the per-unit price would decrease from $10–15.

The Regency division of I.D.E.A announced the TR-1 on October 18, 1954, and put it on sale in New York and Los Angeles on 1 November 1954.

[2] The Regency TR-1 circuitry was refined from the TI design, reducing the number of parts, including two more expensive transistors.

A 22.5 volt battery provides power, since the only way to get adequate radio frequency performance out of early transistors was to run them close to their collector-to-emitter breakdown voltage.

This gives a larger depletion layer between the collector and the base which reduces the parasitic feedback due to the Miller effect and extends the frequency range.

The DC level of the detected signal is filtered with a large capacitor and used to control the gain of the first IF stage.

Regency began assembling the TR-1 on October 25, 1954, supervising a collective effort by manufacturers around the United States.

[14] While the radio was praised for design aesthetics, novelty and small size, because of the cost cutting measures, the sensitivity and sound quality were behind the established vacuum tube based competitors, and reviews were typically adverse.

A review in Consumer Reports mentioned the high level of noise and instability on certain radio frequencies, and recommended against purchase,[8] stating that while listening to speech was "adequate", music quality was unacceptable.