Spring & Portables

With vacation season scorching along, the hottest item in any radio salesroom this week is a natty, luggage-style, portable radio that runs on batteries, needs no wall plug or aerial outlet, can be toted squawking along in a car, a canoe, on a bicycle. With 200,000 of these already sold since their introduction last autumn by Philco, 28 manufacturers who now make them hope to sell some 500,000 more this season at prices ranging from $10 to $50.

If these expectations are fulfilled the radio manufacturing business may cackle the loudest, but much of the egg money will be collected by the makers of dry cell batteries. Each portable radio requires one volt-and-a-half "A" battery (price: 50-c- to $1) and two 45-volt "B" batteries (price $1.50 each). "B" batteries in average use have a life of 250 to 300 hours, but the smaller "A" batteries may have to be renewed after 100 hours of use. The average portable's running cost thus is approximately 1 1/2-c- per hour, about three times that of operating a plug-in set on house current.

There are some 3,000,000 battery-run radio sets in the U. S. today, most of them operating on 2-volt tubes designed in 1930 to operate on heavy-duty, "air cell" batteries. Key to the 1938-39 portable is a low-drain, 1.4-volt tube developed last year. This tube, requiring slightly less "A" voltage and only 90 (instead of 135) volts for the "B" circuit, uses about one-third as much current as the 2-volt tube.

So far, the business brought to it by the 200,000 portables in use has been scarcely a drop in the battery industry's 3,000,000-set bucket, but battery men, like set makers, have high and springy hopes.

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