In 2011, Sony effectively exited the shrinking clock radio market when it discontinued its iconic Dream Machine brand. But aside from nostalgic adults and a few young fogeys, it probably wouldn’t find much of a market. With today’s technology, it would cost pennies to implement the functionality of the Great Awakening clock radio again. And as the electronics inside of consumer devices got smaller and cheaper, the overall products did too. As the price of semiconductors rapidly fell, computers became increasingly affordable. Yet looking back, there was only a very brief period in which punching a time or radio station directly into your clock radio was actually a marketable novelty-or really a novelty at all. With the Great Awakening, GE was selling a clock radio, but the company was also showcasing what technology could do. Even high-end stereo receivers and tuners usually retained plain old radio dials. At the time, the only consumer devices with direct-entry numerical keypads were touch-tone phones, calculators, a few expensive microwaves (most still used dials), and the odd police scanner or personal computer keyboard, still a rarity in American homes.
#GE TUBE CLOCK RADIO SERIES#
The clock radio, while common, was still expensive enough to be a platform for innovation and showmanship.įirst released in 1979 and sold for a few years into the early ’80s, the Great Awakening series came at a crossroads in consumer technology. Some flip clocks were wonderfully built, and, mimicking the home hi-fi components of the day, some even had solid wood cases. Or the faux-woodgrain model that wakes up Marty McFly in Back to the Future. But not, in the initially odd formulation used later in the early ’80s, “electronic digital.” The ’70s were the era of mechanical flipping-digit clocks, or “flip clocks”-think of the clock that plagues Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day, a white plastic Panasonic model released in 1976. The ’70s saw the mainstreaming of digital clock radios. For some reason, the analog units from the ’60s weren’t terribly stylish, and their inexpensive clock movements are prone to failure today. The 1970s were the heyday of the clock radio. Another Panasonic used a complicated record-like mechanism to electronically read aloud the current time at the touch of a button, without the aid of a digital voice synthesizer. Powered on, the time and radio dial appear behind the glass. Panasonic had a cube-shaped clock whose front was a mirror. Sony designed a line of clock radios dubbed EZ, which featured a set of dials for setting the hour and minute for the time or alarm, just the way you’d dial to a temperature setting on your stove. There’s a small flipping-digit clock with a little plastic window on top under a small lightbulb compartment, which somehow projected the time onto the ceiling. There’s a General Electric model that uses amber-burning nixie tubes for its time display, possibly the only clock radio to ever do so. I can illustrate this just with my own personal collection, which is large but by no means exhaustive of clock-radio history. has found the sweet spot in the horseshoe- between QAnon-ers waiting… They were also a sort of trickle-down beneficiary of a great deal of innovation that took place higher up in the electronics industry. One of the most common devices in American homes for decades, clock radios came in a dizzying variety of shapes, sizes, and styles.
They’re less collectible, and seemingly less interesting, than other electronics, like retro video game consoles, vintage stereo gear, or early home computers. There’s a small community of enthusiasts for these devices, and I’ve restored more than one of them so far.Ĭlock radios were, and still are, fascinating to me. The keypads often stop working due to corrosion of exposed contacts, but some very careful sandpaper work can restore them completely. A very nice 7-4885 on eBay can sell for close to $200. area, you press the “FM” button and then punch in “9-7-1.” In other words, if you want to listen to adult contemporary in the Washington, D.C. It was a General Electric, model 7-4885: the “ Great Awakening.” Weighing several pounds and resembling a home police scanner or tiny computer, its defining feature was a keypad, numbered 1-9, allowing you to directly punch in the current time, wake time, and even a radio station. I collect clock radios, and I had read about this one before but not yet seen one. I knew I was looking at something special, ten years ago in a Goodwill somewhere on U.S.
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