1961 Tesla 2702B "Doris"
Coat pocket portable, thermoplastic cabinet
5 9/16 x 3 3/16 x 1 5/8 inches / 141 x 81 x 41 mm
MW, six transistors (Tesla, 2x 104NU70, 107NU70, 2x 155NU70, 156NU70), superheterodyne circuit
Four 1.5v AA cells
Manufactured by Tesla, Prague, Czechoslovakia
The 2702B "Doris" was one of Tesla's most popular transistor radios — a stylish coat pocket set made available in a variety of cabinet colors and produced in fairly large quantities over a period of several years. Quite a bit nicer in design than most of its Western European counterparts of the time, the Doris implemented a slide rule tuning dial readable from both front and top (more for visual effect than for actual usefulness, IMHO!), and the white "Doris" logo on the cabinet face is raised-lettering plastic, a separate element from the colored plastic face beneath it — a really fine design technique also found on Poland's Eltra and Koliber models and the Russian-made Neva-2 but rarely found on transistor radio cabinets from any other country, East or West (one Western European example is Austria's 1960 Knirps TS60).
Interestingly, the Doris was not the first 2702B model: Between the 1960 T60 and the 1961 2702B Doris, there was a transitional model with a much smaller production run than either the T60 or the Doris, known simply as the 2702B, with the same chassis as the Doris and looking very much like the T60 except for an extension to the cabinet's left side to make room for the larger chassis inside — this space was filled in with the word, "TRANSISTOR" in vertical black large-cap raised lettering — see the bottom three images on this page.
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