1959/60 Philco T-51:

4 5/8"H x 3 1/8"W x 1 7/8"D

The scan of this radio is awful -- in reality the T-51's cabinet has a blue-gray back half and a white front half with a clear plastic tuning dial and silver foil lettering and numbers. And as with the two Silvertones on the preceeding page, an appreciation of the T-51's cabinet design is probably an acquired taste for most people. Nothing fancy here! But then nothing ugly here, either -- just a modest design lacking jet wings or atomic orbits or any other gratuitous nods to "progress."

I found this particular T-51 in its box with papers in 1993. It was lying on the bottom shelf of a glass display cabinet in a hardware store in Bath, Maine, where it very likely had awaited a buyer for more than thirty years. It cost me $5.

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© 2007 by Robert Davidson, transistors@abetterpage.com