Retro Radio: Six Decades of Design 1920s-1970s

Before television and MTV, the radio was central in the home, a way for the family to gather to hear the news or listen to music. Over 175 images provide an impressive visual journey through the radio’s aesthetic history, reflecting all the major design changes across the years. The images also reveal the diversity of materials, textures, colours, shapes, and sizes of radios of earlier ages. ‘Retro Radio’ ranges from the 1920s tabletop wooden console models in the classic bread box, cathedral, and tombstone styles, to the wooden and early Bakelite and Catalin plastic art deco models of the 1930s to the 1950s, on to the thermoplastic models’ cutting-edge styling, and the transistors that ascended to prominence in the 1950s and beyond. Reintroducing machines that few people see anymore and perhaps hardly know existed, this fascinating book restores the once state-of-the-art machines’ aesthetic glory.

AUTHOR: Mike Tauber is an award-winning photographer specializing in portraiture, travel, interiors, and architecture. He shoots worldwide for both magazines and commercial clients from his base in New York City. Ron Simon is curator of radio and television at the Paley Center for Media and was a contributor to the ‘Encyclopedia of Radio’. 176 colour