Truetone was a brand of Western Auto stores. Based in Kansas City, Western Auto stores covered America coast to coast in the 1950s. This was their first transistor radio.

Truetone was one of those brands of radios that didn't have a factory. Truetone radios were made FOR them by radio manufacturers, usually with not much more than a bit of styling input from the marketing department at Truetone. Since brands like Truetone were already outsourcing production of electronics, it was easy for them to outsource their products later to Japan, when that seemed like a good idea in the late-1950s. And that they did. This is one of those Japanese-made Truetone radios. But their first transistor radio, the one we are looking at today, was made in America.

The Truetone brand appeared on televisions too, and on all the other electronic entertainment items Western Auto sold--stereos, record players, clock-radios, and more. As collectors, we're focused on THINGS and we like to talk about who was the first to MAKE a thing or the first to OFFER a feature on that thing--things like that. But I think it's also interesting to look at who was first to SELL a thing. Where did the public first SEE these items for sale? When the transistor radio was new, you had to go out of your way, into the city, to find a Regency radio at a specialty shop, or a Bulova radio at the jewelers. Or you had to go to a radio and TV shop to see a Zenith or Emerson or Admiral.

Here's where the role of the "store brand" comes into the story--and this is a role that is often overlooked. By "store brand" I'm not talking generics, those unbranded bargain items we started to see in the 1970s, I'm talking store brands--perhaps it helps to think of one of the best known store brands, historically, and that is Craftsman, which was a store brand of Sears Roebuck. Sears had lots of store brands including Kenmore and Coldspot (which was Sears's answer to General Electric's HotPoint). Two of today's most popular store brands are "Great Value" sold at Walmart, and "Kirkland," a store brand of Costco. You don't see store brands on electronics much anymore, but you used to. And we may well see more of that in the future.

The thing about store brands is that they are sold by stores YOU WERE ALREADY GOING TO for other things-- necessities like clothes, hardware, tires, and stuff like that. So a shopper could be exposed to a new product--a product they weren't particularly even looking for-- just by virture of a store having ITS version of the product on display. And this is where, and how, many people first saw a transistor radio. Not by going all over town specifically looking for one. In the beginning of the transistor radio era, 1955 and '56, FOUR retailers were first to offer their own "store brand" transistor radios. Montgomery Ward was one of those, offering their Airline brand. Sears offered their Silvertone brand. Firestone, believe it or not, was one of these first retailers, offering TWO store brands: "Firestone" and "Air Chief." And Western Auto was one of these four retailing pioneers offering Truetone.

And this is the first transistor radio they sold, The Truetone DC-3715A. It's an interesting looking radio that employs just four transistors and runs on one of those fat 9-volt batteries like the Burgess 2N6 seen here on the left. Who actually made this radio is a subject of some confusion. Here's the earlier Raytheon T-100 model and you can see the obvious similarities. While I try and explain what happened, I'll show you the Raytheon's other descendents, branded Airline, Symphonic,... and an interestingly upside-down Hallicrafters.

The Raytheon T-100 was one of the earliest transistor radios ever made. There's a video all about it on this channel. It can easily be assumed that Raytheon made the Truetone, and these others. But, the story isn't that simple. In 1945, Raytheon, out of Massachusetts, had acquired Chicago-based Belmont Radio, and made radios there in Chicago under both the Belmont and Raytheon brands. Then in 1956, just after the first Raytheon transistor radios were made, Belmont was sold ...to Admiral. So, now we have more personnel changes in the styling and production departments as the Admiral name goes up over the door and the Raytheon-branded models are retired. But these other versions of this radio continue under Admiral... and where in this timeline any particular one of these models was made is hard to say. You could say they are all in some sense part Raytheon, part Belmont, and part Admiral. Going forward into the later 1950s, some of the design motifs first seen on transistor radios of this style--designed under Raytheon--continued on in radios made by, and branded Admiral.

And... what happened to Truetone and Western Auto? There's a video on this channel called "What Happened To Western Auto" and it tells all about it. It's the most successful video on this channel at this point so... maybe...go have a look.

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