Sony historic 1956 early transistor radio Japan TR-6 vintage Sony Boy Hoffman solar

This is Sony Boy, an advertising character first drawn in 1956 for Sony by this person, whose name I have no hope of pronouncing correctly (Fuyuhiko Okabe). What is Sony Boy holding here in his debut appearance? It's slim and it's stylish. It's one of Sony's very earliest transistor radios and it's from 1956. The Sony TR-6 is a six-transistor and uses four c-cell batteries. It's very different from the four or five Sony radios that preceded it to market. In fact, they were all very different. Sony was not into incrementalism--sticking to one design and making improvements to it. Well, I guess I have to take that back. The TR-5 was, I suppose, an incremental improvement over the TR-55 that came before it. But after that, they changed course radically and explored with each new model new configurations and new looks--at least in the early days. In retrospect, the collector sees that Sony's push-the-envelope attitude ran through all levels of the company, including research and engineering, marketing, and product design. The TR-6 features this great, large, clear plastic dial window, and a clear round dial knob behind it. The rest of the cabinet is made of a stiff and brittle plastic that is easily broken. That's why most of these that have survived are cracked and/or chipped, like this one. The TR-6 came in ivory, light green, dark green, and this maroon. At the heart of this radio are the transistors, of course, and those transistors weren't sourced from America or from one of the older, larger Japanese firms. Sony made them. Even though Sony was, at the time, a relatively very small company, it was among the first group of companies to license the transistor patent from Western Electric in America when licensing was opened up in late 1951. Even though, according to my research, it seems that per the US military, licensing was only open to NATO countries of which Japan was not. The transistors here are the early, oval-shaped ones. Sony went on to become a major player in semiconductors and supplied transistors for a handful of other radio brands. We see them in some early Standards, Sanyos, and Spica radios. Sony would only sell transistors to radio brands that, like Sony, began with the letter "S." No, I just made that up. Fake news. What's that empty area on the right side, next to the chassis, below the volume knob? It's a compartment..for storing the earphone. What will they think of next? This is a pretty unusual thing to do. In subsequent models, Sony and the rest of the transistor radio makers made every effort to keep customers' curious fingers OUT of the inner workings of their radios, often resorting to battery compartments that did not allow access to the chassis. But here's Sony welcoming you inside the back as a convenient place to store your earphone. Not so convenient, I'd say, since the back is held on with a thumbscrew and stashing that earphone would take significantly more time than just stashing it in a leather pouch as became the norm with most transistor radios. Strangely, the cabinet for this Sony radio shows up on U.S.-made Hoffman "Home and Travel" radios. Those Hoffman radios came in a solar version, like those you see here, and also in a non-solar version. Inside the Hoffman, we see a very different chassis than we saw in the Sony. The cabinet for the Hoffman differs in minor ways from the Sony to accomodate different handles used on the two different Hoffman versions. But there is no doubt that this is a Sony cabinet used on the Hoffmans because it literally says so. The small easel stand on the back is branded "Sony"--on the Sony, of course. And even on the Hoffmans! It seems doubtful that Hoffman actually ordered these cabinets from Sony but rather seems more likely that they were purchased as excess stock from Sony, or the actual cabinet maker, or even some kind of liquidator. But I'm speculating with these guesses and I can't say with certainty how this really came to be. Collectors DO like to speculate. That is a large part of what makes the hobby so much fun. But people are finding it increasingly difficult in these times to know the difference between speculations and facts. I'll tell you why I think that is.. while we look over the original owner's manual for the Sony TR-6. It's the earliest Sony manual I've ever seen, and while I would like to read it here, it's all Greek to me... So, about speculations and facts: It seems.. that beginning with the baby boom generation, American public schools began teaching the "scientific method," or rather a kind of simplistic version of it. This, like the so-called "new math," was intended to upgrade the American education system to help us keep up with the Rooskies who were, we were assured, out to get us. In this scientific method, as we understood it, a guess we might make about something.. was entitled to an automatic upgrade to a new, more sciencey word, hypothesis. And we were encouraged to do this, to posit such...