Before 1950, radio exerted an influence on America that equaled that of railroad and the automobile. The rail network created cities and structured our economic lives. Later the automobile moved many people to the suburbs, the postwar economy, and a new consumer status. But radio shaped the American mind and its imagination.

Jack Benny, Fibber McGee & Molly, and Amos 'n Andy put a smile on the nation's faces in dark days. The Shadow conjured mysterious superhuman influences at work. The naive messages from the Lone Ranger and Dick Tracy had a spine of truth, justice, and the American way. Little wonder that so many of us share a shameless nostalgia for a simpler time. Our youth.

When we listened at home, the radio receivers were primitive objects-by today's high-tech standards-though they did the job. As technical advances improved the interior mechanism, the whole set could be made lighter and smaller. Radio design plots an advancement from the cumbersome wooden consoles of the twenties and thirties to the matchbox-size receivers of today that can fit into a very small pocket.

The designs featured here represent a cross section of three decades of radio cabinet aesthetics. Their elegance and sometimes whimsy is uniquely American. Very few models from overseas manufacturers could rival the imaginative appeal and flair of the U.S. companies and industrial designers.

The infinite variation of cabinet design over a period of thirty years offers the collector the continual prospect of finding something new and sometimes undocumented. Vintage radio collecting has mushroomed in the United States. To find a fifty-year-old radio that approaches mint condition is rare indeed, and treasured by the collector, but much else can be treasured and even returned to good order. There are specialists now who enjoy comfortable careers as restorers and manufacturers of replication parts, such as knobs, dial glasses, trims, handles, and cosmetic adornments that time has not treated well.

In only eleven years, between 1930 and 1941, an estimated 71 million home radio receivers were sold in the United States. They are a pleasure to hear as well as see, today and in the mind's eye of my youth, in equal measure. (Philip Collins)