Regency TR-1

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The Regency TR-1, announced on October 18, 1954 by the Regency Division of I.D.E.A (Industrial Development Engineering Associates of Indianapolis, Indiana) and put on sale in November 1954 was the first practical transistor radio made in any significant numbers. The circuit, refined from one originally designed by engineers from Texas Instruments, was eventually patented by Richard Koch, who also reduced the number of parts required, including two expensive transistors. This enabled the radio to be sold at a slight profit. It cost $49.95 (the equivalent of roughly $364 in year-2006 dollars) and sold about 150,000 units.

The TR-1 used Texas Instruments' NPN transistors, hand-picked in sets of four. The radio was powered by a 22.5 Volt battery, 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. The high rate of battery consumption made the TR-1 very expensive to run, and it was far more popular for its novelty or status value than its actual performance, rather in the fashion of the first Sony Walkman, portable television, MP3 players.

Still, aside from its indifferent performance, the TR-1 was a very advanced product for its time, using printed circuit boards, and what were then considered micro-miniature components.