Usae Of "Transitone" and "Philco Transitione& - Printable Version

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Usae Of "Transitone" and "Philco Transitione& - PTurney - 11-28-2005

Hi,

In 1939 it appears the small table-top radios offered by Philco had just the word "transitone" on the front (no Philco), but in the 1940 model year they switched to using "Philco Transitone" or just "Philco". However, I notice from Ron's book that there are some 1940 models that showed just "transitone" (e.g TH-14 on page 136). Is this the case, since they don't look like 1939 carry overs? Were they truly 1940 models?

Also, it seems the 1940 models introduced the use of handles (TH-14 does) and that in some instances the police band markings went all around the outer edge of the dial, rather than being clustered around the 1'o clock location as (it appears) on 39 models.

Any comments?

Paul

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- Ron Ramirez - 11-28-2005

Hi Paul

You might want to look over "Transitone History 101" in the Philco-Transitone Auto Radios section:
http://www.philcoradio.com/phorum/showthread.php?tid=22

When Philco initially brought out their 1940 model lineup in June 1939, they continued the small line of "Transitone" (no Philco) models. This changed in August 1939 when they added the PHILCO name to the sets, new dial scales on many of them, etc. Model numbers changed from TH-xx and TP-xx to PT-xx at this time, also.

It certainly appears that all of the little Transitone models were built by Simplex for Philco (Philco bought controlling interest in Simplex in 1937). I've seen an example of one Transitone that was marketed under the Simplex name also; there may have been others, as I own a Transitone chassis with a very different dial scale (no name).

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