Customer Reviews

Zenith Transistor Radios: Evolution of a Classic

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It is always fun to read a book written by someone in love with a subject. This beautifully illustrated history of Zenith transistor radios is the perfect example of a love affair in print. Ads, color photos, engineering trivia, pricing estimates, and a firm dose of opinion, all beautifully packaged.

This is an excellent book not only for its rendition of the history of Zenith transistor radios during the "Golden Years" but also because it provides a perspective on how the consumer electronics industry changed over the decade of 1955 ~ 1965.

Zenith's legendary leader Commander MacDonald was still running Zenith at the beginning of this period and you can see his influence driving the engineers to come up with superior products like the Royal 500H, the best tube portable radio ever made (the A600/B600 series Trans-Oceanics) and the first transistor Trans-Oceanic, the Royal 1000. At the end you see the effects of the death of Commander MacDonald and the other changes that drove Zenith (and the other U.S. consumer electronics companies as well) to be less engineering-focused and more marketing-focused.

In some ways it was painful for me to read this book since I was in the consumer electronics industry at the end of this period (and into the 1990s) and witnessed this transistion take place.

If you collect transistor radios I'd recommend this book even if you don't specifically collect Zenith radios, since it is a good history of the development of transistor radios in general during the period.

Mr. Smith obviously did a tremendous amount of research to produce this book and his work is to be commended. It also is obviously a labor of love.