Peter Bacon Hales

​Chapter Eleven-- Portable Communities: Radio, 1963: Color Images, Added Illustrations, Outtakes 

Outside the Gates of Eden:  The Dream of America from Hiroshima to Now

11.1 Cover for the official CONELRAD pamphlet, 1953

​The two extremes of Zenith's 1963 transistor radio line.

Sony pocket transistors were the best-- most stylish, most reliable.  With the introduction of pocket transistor radios in the late '50s, Sony was able to introduce itself as a counter to the prevailing wisdom that Japanese import goods were shoddy.  By 1963, they had a full stable of products, including the first successfully marketed portable tv.

Little Eva's Loco-Motion was such a rapid-fire hit that it took the record producers a few months to repackage her;  in the first 45 dust-jacket, she looks utterly artificial, and the image of the locomotive is even more inept.  By the time London had exported an EP, though, she was sassy and fun.