TR-55

The Sony TR -55 is the name of a transistor radios from Sony (then under the name of Tōkyō Tsushin Kōgyō Kabushiki Kaisha, TTK ). It was published in 1955 and was the first commercially available transistor radio from Sony and the first produced in Japan.

Description

The use of transistors instead of vacuum tubes it possible to produce much smaller electrical circuits, thereby reducing the size of the devices, such as radios, also was significantly smaller, so that the manufacturing portable radios was possible for the first time.

TR -55 using five transistors, which have been developed and manufactured by Sony. For this purpose a technique of Bell Labs was licensed. This made Sony the first company able to produce the transistor radio from scratch. Regency, previously the Regency TR-1 brought a year on the market, then still used transistors, which they bought from Texas Instruments.