What an amazing device to pacify the public. Did we really know what we were getting into when introducing passive entertainment to the home? I still can’t shake how much television plays a role in my life, even if I do see what it does to me.

Did leaving out the audio amplifier and loudspeaker significantly reduce the cost of the set?

Radios had auxiliary inputs? I wouldn’t have expected that. Can I plug in my iPod?

Yes, leaving out the audio sections would dramatically reduce the costs. Good radios had very large audio-output transformers (as did good AM transmitters) and good loudspeakers were not at all inexpensive either.

Yes, as a matter of fact, you could easily plug in your iPod on one of these and it would play through the radio. I used to do that fairly often with a reel-to-reel recorder (remember those?) to play old radio shows through console radios for display.

The auxiliary inputs were usually fitted on radios so that they could host a turntable, rather than for anything like a wire recorder (very expensive technology).

ALan

ALan:
Thanks!
Of course, our home theaters of today use separate amps and speakers.

I was kidding about the iPod.
I think there would be impedance mismatch issues.

Back in the late 1930′s my dad brought home a big Philco console radio and phonograph. It had a bunch of push buttons that could be set to various stations on the dial for fast tuning. One of the buttons had “television” printed on it. I asked him what that was for and he proudly said that when television eventually arrived, we would be able to just attach a special unit onto the console and be all set! Of course that never happened in our case; a rather large war got in the way, but I suppose that it would have looked something like this thing had it ever been built. Interesting.

Trf4Tz Thanks for good post