In 1957, a small Japanense electronics company SONY marketed the TR-63 in the U.S. In a few years radio manufacturers in the U.S. either got out of the radio business or started importing parts, assemblies or the whole radio with their name on it. The only major manufacturer, Zenith fought the change until they too gave in by the mid 1960's. Why Japanese companies were able to take over was the ability to market their radios at a lower price. Americans for a while refuse to buy imported products because early products were poor quality and cheap copies of American models. As Japanese manufacturers started to go on their own and mature the trend reversed. This was especially noted in automobiles.
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STAYING WITH TRADITION
TABLE MODEL SETS
Zenith's First Transistor AC Table Radio
USA Brands using Foreign Parts and Assemblies
Boy's Radio or Budget Transistor Radio
Zenith
The company was co-founded by Ralph Matthews and Karl Hassel in Chicago, Illinois, as Chicago Radio Labs. in 1918 as a small producer of amateur radio equipment. The name "Zenith" came from ZN'th, a contraction of its founders' ham radio call sign, 9ZN. They were joined in 1921 by Eugene F. McDonald, and Zenith Radio Company was incorporated in 1923. Zenith established one of the first FM stations in the country in 1940 (Chicago's WWZR, later called WEFM, named for Zenith executive Eugene F. McDonald). The transistorized Transoceanic was McDonald's last consumer electronics vision that came to being. He passed away the following year.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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