Sears, Roebuck & Co., Fall and Winter
1941−42 Catalog Cover
24 pages of radios, tubes, and batteries.

Page 832 - What's New in Radio for 1942?

Page 843 - Gasoline- and wind-powered electricity generators,
storage batteries.

Vintage style
Crosley Corsair Tabletop Radio
The year was 1941 and the radio industry was going strong worldwide. Sales of
receivers was hitting new highs every quarter and service shops had all the work
they could handle for repair, upgrades, and installations. The radio broadcast realm
was scrambling to build new studios, install transmitters and antennas, hire announcers
and managers, and upgrade to keep up with the quickly evolving business. Take a
look at these 24 full pages of radio-related products offered by the
Sears, Roebuck Company in their
Fall and Winter 1941-1942 catalog. It is typical of most radio manufacturers' catalogs
of the era. For the last decade engineers had been working overtime to satisfy consumer
demand for fancier cabinet designs with fancier features. So strong was public demand
that people put their highest priority on acquiring the latest models (not unlike
the smartphone craze of today). Then, on December 7th, the Japanese attacked
Pearl Harbor,
the U.S. formally engaged World War II, and within weeks almost all efforts
were converted from household products to wartime equipment. That effectively put
a hold on new consumer radio product development and sales until late in 1945. Until
then, existing warehouse stock and used radios were the only thing available.
Keep in mind that television had not yet entered the marketplace on a large scale,
so radio constituted the primary means of obtaining "live" information. Sears had
their own privately branded line of radios known as "Silvertone," which were
manufactured by various companies such as
Air King,
Stewart Warner,
Detrola,
Colonial, Noblitt-Sparks (Arvin),
and Warwick. Console (the big one that sat on the floor), tabletop, portable, and
automobile radios were offered in many different models. Montgomery Ward's "Airline"
and Western Auto's "Western Air Patrol" (and others) radios were also custom-branded
third-party items made by the aforementioned electronics companies.
Note that included in the radio product section of the catalog are batteries
and even a wind turbine electricity generator. If you are not familiar with the
early days of radio, you might think the batteries were for only the portable radio;
however, a lot of the console and tabletop radios were designed to run off of both
AC and DC power. That was necessary because a large number of rural and more remote
suburban areas were not serviced by AC power lines even by the early 1940s. Most
farms ran entirely on DC - lights, appliances, etc. - and relied on deep cycle storage
batteries for electric power. Unless a wind-, stream (hydro)-, or gasoline-powered
generator was installed to recharge batteries, it was necessary to haul them into
town for charging. High voltage supplies for plate biasing required a series and/or
parallel connections of "B" batteries with terminal voltages of 45, 67½,
and 90 volts. The
Rural Electrification
Act of 1936 facilitated installation of power lines to, eventually, nearly all
residential and commercial locations, which ultimately mitigated the need for AC/DC
radios. Of course the at-rest inertia of government programs meant that even by
1941 not a whole lot of progress had been made, and World War II caused
further delay in implementation.
There has been somewhat of a renaissance in vintage-style radios, telephones,
phonographs, and other electronic products, with Crosley being one of the main companies
producing them. Crosley, of course, has been around since the early days of radio.
If you are interested, here is my restored
1941 Crosley 03CB console radio as an example of what they were making at the
time these Silvertone radios were around. It was probably one of the last consumer
items manufactured prior to the factory being converted to wartime use. Most radios
and phonographs of the time had very nice wooden cabinets, although a few were beginning
to appear with a type of phenolic material that was advertised as "plastic." It
would be nice if Crosley and/or others would begin making console style radios again
with real wood cabinets. Modern electronics could be incorporated like programmable
AM, FM, satellite, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth radio, a CD player, Smart Home connectivity,
etc. As the average floor area of new homes continues to increase, space should
not be a problem.

Page 833 - The Silvertone that has everything.

Page 837 - Electric console radios.

Page 841- Portable radios.

Page 841D - Battery radios.

Page 846 - 90-volt "B" batteries for home radios.
|

Page 834 - 6-in-1 Silvertone radios.

Page 838 - "Most improved" tabletop radios.

Page 841A - New kind of battery radio "Stratobeam."

Page 842 - 2-in-1 AC/DC radios.

Page 847 - 45-volt and 67½-volt "B" batteries for
home radios.

Page 850 - Silvertone radio vacuum tubes.
|

Page 835 - 4-Star feature deluxe radio-phonograph.

Page 839 - Tabletop radios.

Page 841B - Best rural Silvertone radios.

Page 844 - Automobile radios.

Page 848 - 4½-volt "A" batteries.

Page 851 - Vacuum tube price comparison.
|

Page 836 - Radio-phonographs.

Page 840 - Compact radios.

Page 841C - New "Stratobeam Reception."

Page 845 - Radio antennas and installation kits.

Page 849 - "A," "B," and "C" batteries for portable radios.
|
<Previous
Next>
Posted November 21, 2019
|