The Golden Age of Bike Radio

There have been hundreds of thousands of different makes and models of transistor radios.  Every once in a while I find one unique enough to write about. I recently discovered the Concept 2000 Bike Radio which has an interesting form factor. In researching it I found there was a very specific era when Bike Radios were notably popular, relatively speaking. This is different from motorcycle radios which date back much earlier, to at least 1915. To define terms I'm looking only at radios which can be installed on a bicycle, and are marketed primarily at a children demographic. I did not expect at the start of this that I'd find the inventor of the bike radio or that it even had one... but it did. But let's start with that first bike radio that started me on this quest:

Concept 2000 made an odd selection of radios, from high quality table radios to plastic children's novelties. They had multiple Mickey Mose, Big Bird and Cookie Monster radios. This one lands somewhere in the middle, having some novelty in the category but it's size distinctly also made it functional. You can see how it works immediately. The two flanges slot into the back of the radio, and clamp tight on the handle pars. the compass-like dial is a simple enough AM radio. The radio inside the box looks exactly like the picture on the outside. I've seen the circuit, it's nothing to write home about. Inside is a simple and very short ferrite rod antenna.  It takes a 9 volt battery and it works.

Apparently this was not their only foray into bike radios. In the early 1970s they came out with an  AM/CB radio which clamped to the handle bars but was a bit bigger, with a contoured shape. It looks very 1980s, like something you'd attach to a plastic kids seat at Burger King (below). Notice that foot tall flexible coil antenna? I'm sure no kid ever hit the handlebars and took that whip antenna right in the eyeball. 

More complex devices were also available beyond that CB/radio. Siemens had one in the sixties. Westinghouse made at least one Bike radio-headlight which was advertised in 1968 through 1970. A later version re-appeared in 1989 Boys life. The one picture I found has an amber strobe amber light on top of the device. Fanon, a name I know as a maker of cheap walkie talkies, was selling their own Bike Radio in 1978 called the "Spokesman" which also incorporated a CB. It had a completely different form factor and would have looked more at home on a desk than a bike. It may have been repurposed from some other design.

I found an issue of Boys life from august 1971 which had yet two more Bike radio products: an Archer Bike radio of a completely different design, available from Radioshack. But also a whole feature on a bike radio bracket by Glen Wagner which merely clamps your standard pocket transistor radio to the handlebars. The Archer model continued to appear sporadically through June of 1972. A second maker of the bracket "Buddy Bike Radio" was for sale in the classifieds for $5.99 and included a 6-transistor radio from Gentile Sound Enterprises. Their address was PO Box 147, Fairport NY 14450. It's a Rochester suburb; the company advertised it only in 1972.

As you would imagine, Radioshack had their own Bike Radio by December of 1974, SKU 12-193. It was simply called the "AM Bike Radio".  It looks highly derivative of the Archer model with a more contoured chassis. Kmart had one that was almost identical. Arvin sold a model in 1971 which also looked identical and was sold through at least 1984.

In the mail order scam world J.S.C.A. was selling a combination radio/horn/light combo from 1965 through 1972.  Olympic Sales club was still selling a no-name Bike radio in 1989. As horrible as those were, the Discover American Sales Club had a combo Bike Radio, Siren Megaphone which obviously no parent would think was a good idea. You might notice these later bike radios have some safety features. These were listed as fire resistant, and water proof, and had lights built in. This was probably an acknowledgement that they were actually marketing to the parents. 

Most of these ads are from the late 1960s and early 1970s. That's your golden era of the bike radio. The latest models I've found were in the 1990s. In 1992, a green no-name GPX AM/FM radio still being sold by the Olympia Sales Club in Boys life. Nintendo also notably made a "sport" AM/FM  bike radio with a built-in clock and light in 1998. It came in a few colors. You can still pick those up on eBay for about $25. Purportedly Hasbro made a pink Barbie Bike radio as late as 2002.

You can still buy a "bike radio" today but it's more of a Bluetooth speaker than a radio. But JBL still makes one that clamps to the handlebars; a descendant of the originals marketed more at motorcycles and with the modern soft rubbery exterior that breaks down so quickly.

The earliest references to bike radios are from Popular Electronics which advertised "How to Build a Bike Radio" as early as 1954. This was advertised in Radio & Television News, Popular Mechanics, and Flying Magazines but I've never found that article nor the kit. The image below is from 1956 and I had thought that was it.  But World Radio History has a scan of the October 1954 issue with the original Bike Radio instructions referred to in all those advertisements. [SOURCE]  That's pictured at the top of the page. That's the first ever issue of Popular Electronics by the way.

That How-to article was authored by Louis E. Garner Jr., a prolific writer, editor, and frequent contributor to Popular Electronics for over 25 years. Before Popular Electronics Lou wrote articles for Electronics Illustrated as early as 1961. He also wrote for the National Parks Service, Popular Science, Radio and Television News all the way back to 1950. [SOURCE] He also wrote texts for Coyne Electrical School, Tab Books, and the infamous Gernsback Library. It's also interesting to note that he also wrote prose, contributing to Quanta, the Washington Science Fiction Association zine starting in 1949. (Note: There have been at least 3 different publications by the name Quanta) [SOURCE] So there you have it, Lou Garner, engineer, writer, PhD, and unassuming resident of Silver Springs MD, the granddaddy of them all.

Radio Shack is Back?

I keep finding retail Radio Shacks still open and operating. In June of 2015, they entered into a partnership with Sprint (and a hedge-fund) that rescued some 1,700 stores across America. There also are about 700 franchised Radio Shack stores across the U.S. still operating. There are at least four still open in Brooklyn, NY alone. The persistence of the brand continues to impress me. In 5 more years they will reach their centennial.

AM-FM Radio Kit, batteries, not included

It self-advertised on the side of the box "Listen to local AM and FM radio stations on a radio that you built yourself. Safe, solderless, coil-spring assembly."  Radioshack catalog item# 28-175 was for the nerdy neighborhood kid, the second line for the parents. Every parent lived in fear that he would set the carpet on fire with a soldering iron. They were right of course. I read about one of those soldering-iron-gone-awry fires just recently.

The Brand "Science Fair" was actually owned by Tandy which of course actually was Radio Shack. They had a microcomputer trainer with a similar design. On the bottom it says in tiny print: made in china. I have no definitive date on when these were made. It appears to be a mid 1980s product just from the color scheme and the condition of the hardware. For what it's worth, Tandy trademarked the brand "Science fair" in 1970. More here.

They worked but were totally inferior to other available gear. You can get a breadboard and jump wires cheap enough to call it a toy. Btu if you want to go all out, the Denshi block-type units like the Gakken EX-System were reissued in 2002, so they are available but very pricey. See below:

Radio Artifact # 89

Radio Shack was founded in 1921 by two brothers, Theodore and Milton Deutschmann. It focused on amateur radio gear. their first store was in Boston, MA. In the 1960s as the hobby fell off the small chain of electronics stores was struggling. Tandy saw an opportunity and bought the company in 1962.
   In May 2000, the company dropped the Tandy name completely and became just Radio Shack. They must have regretted this somewhat as only about a year ago they began trying to re-brand as "the shack" which still makes me think of an outhouse. Regardless, this page of ephemera  probably dates to shortly after the merger. Radioshack was still making catalogs even in the 1990s but the binder-style catalogs stopped in the 1970s I think.

Clean Your Heads

Radio Shack sold head cleaning kits for everything, even things that probably didn't need it like the 5¼ floppy drive head cleaning kit for the TRS-80. They made them for VHS, 8-Tracks, cassettes, mini DV, reel-to-reel and floppy discs of all sizes. These days they still make the cleaner for mini-DV but the rest are discontinued. Head cleaning is a task long practiced in radio-land.

Since the advent of optical devices we seem to have forgotten that media playback used to require maintainence. Kits come in two basic types, both use denatured isopropyl alcohol to clean but one has a little hand hand-scrubber and the other a scrubber built into playback device that will contact the head. There are a number of tape cleaning kits still made today by Epson, Maxell, Chemtronics, Sony, Phillips, Panasonic, Cannon, JVC and others.

Personally I've always preferred a Q-tip. They're cheap, plentiful and you can buy the ones on long wooden sticks so they can reach everything. If you take this as a reminder to clean your heads, do recall that there will be up to three of them, write, erase and playback. Don't skip any, and do remember to blow out the dust with canned air before you begin.

PSA: Crystal Controlled Weather Radio

I bought this at a Goodwill for $3.97 plus tax. It takes a 9v battery (or 9V DC adapter) and allows me to tune to one of three frequencies for NOAA weather report: 162.55, 162.475, and 162.40. Of those three only two actually yield a signal out here. The telescoping antenna is about 22 inches tall and looks snazzy with the simulated walnut finish.  It only works near a window but  it works well.You can canvass your local thrift stores or just buy one used on eBay for $7 or so.

(Above image stolen from Etsy.) This is model 12-152A, there was a later revision 12-162 with an identical chassis. The 12-140, and the 12-141 had digital displays, and the 12-1371 was an in-car model. The 12-1818 had a cube chassis and was tunable.  It reeked more of the 1970s than the other models if you're looking for a true classic. These puppies were made by Tandy for Radioshack in the 1970s and 1980s. I think the Timekube was also in this series. More here.

Regardless, comedy aside you should have something like this in your home for emergencies. You should have it and know how to use it. You can look up your local NOAA frequencies here. Knowing where the tornado, hail storm, hurricane, blizzard, tsunami, forest fire or flood crest etc.can be important suddenly. This is a cheap simple way that anyone can be prepared.