Braun 1958 transistor radio T3 up close Dieter Rams minimalism product design celebrity worship
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- Опубликовано: 18 ноя 2023
- I've collected transistor radios for a long time. The one we're looking at today would be considered by many to be the most "important" transistor radio I have. That rubs me the wrong way.
It's pronounced "Brown," they tell me. I don't mind saying it right, but that puts me in the position of saying it differently than every other English-speaker, because, they say Brawn. I don't like sounding like a smartass, or sounding wrong either. So this name seems like a source of unnecessary conflict. And while we're pronouncing things, there's this: Dieter Rams. He's the designer, the famous designer at Brawn, uh Brown who is known for his minimalistic approach to... damn near everything. And I'm sure I got his name wrong too.
OK, now that we've got the celebrity talk out of the way, let's talk about this radio as a RADIO, just like any other object I look at in these videos. Because.. remember. SOMEONE designed ALL the things I look at. Most of the designers toiled, as the saying goes, in obscurity. But that doesn't make their work any less important or valuable. We get the pleasure of seeing and appreciating their work, even if we don't know their names. The very notion of "designer this" and "designer that" is a recent phenomenon--if you didn't know. People today talk of designer handbags and designer shoes... and even collectors refer to the Raymond Loewy Studebacker and Virgil Exner's fins. We didn't used to talk about such things. They were just Studebakers and Dodges. We enjoyed the cars and the shoes and all that--we just didn't have to turn it into a celebrity thing. We're obsessed with celebrity these days. Even in politics, if a pop culture celebrity decides he or she wants to run for political office, no more qualified than ANY of the rest of us--they are automatically the front runner. And the media, obsessed with celebrity, just amplifies the problem. Oh, enough about that.
I do like this little Braun T3. It's clean lines are its strongest point. It's a two-band radio and there's a switch on the back for selecting the MW band or the LW band. Now, I don't speak German but I think this stands for ((in accent)) medium wave und long wave. Ja? ((yah))
It's said to have been the inspiration for Apple's iPod. But then the Regency TR-1 is said to have been the inspriation for Apple's iPod. I don't think Apple's designers would have come up with anything different had neither of those transistor radios ever existed. I know that's heresy, coming from a transistor guy like myself. But I'm also a design guy, if I may so self-designate..and that seems obvious. You might as well say the Braun from 1958 was inspired by the Regency from 1954. I don't think I would. But you might.
The case is like nothing I've seen on any other radio.. with this flap for easy access to the front. Usually a case for a transistor radio will have cutouts for the knobs and holes in front of the speaker to let the sound through. But there aren't any holes here, so I guess it's good that there's a flap. And you're going to need that flap open to tune it too, since there is no cutout for the tuning knob. If we're grading on "form follows function," as we have every right to since that's the classroom Braun has chosen to lecture in, I'd have to give this case an F. But maybe I just don't understand it. OK, I admit it. I DON'T understand it. And I don't know or understand what this "bunching" up is that appears on the bottom. This zipper pull I DO understand. It's a paper clip. Did what was originally on there break? Or was this case so minimalist that it had no zipper pull at all and a user, somewhere along the way, added a paper clip just so he or she could grip the damned thing.
Inside, the radio looks impressive enough. Solid and well built. This battery business looks like yet another mystery to me. There seems to be a battery compartment in the radio and another one up under the lid or back, each area holding two penlite batteries. I don't see how the batteries in the lid connect into the circuit. Or are they just some kind of spares? This seems like an overly fussy arrangement. The power source is already the part of any portable radio most prone to fail--a design approach that deals with that failure point would be a step forward. I don't think that's what we're seeing here. It looks like I'm missing a couple of those springs that help hold the batteries in. And what's with this battery clip? It looks like a 9-volt battery clip but sometimes those are used with battery holders holding penlight batteries. I don't know--something is definitely amiss here, Perhaps it has been modified along the way. But even that begs the question, why? Why would it be modified if it hadn't first.. failed in some way?
We find a circuit diagram tucked up inside the back with teeny tiny printing on it. Under a literal MICROSCOPE, I was able to see that the radio's power requirement is 6 volts, which would be delivered by 4 penlite cells. 
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Your discussion of the Braun thermometer is spot on. Many products of that brand (as well as B&O and a few others) are essentially unusable because there is nothing about their design that is intuitive. And God forbid that, like myself, you are in the electronics service business, and have to figure out how to take some of those units apart! But perhaps the worst examples of unintuitive and wrong-headed design are car radios which, rather than having a volume knob, force you, while driving, to navigate through menus just to turn them up or down.
Yes! It almost seems as if the volume knob is forbidden for some reason. Like in a design meeting someone brings up using a volume knob and the whole room erupts in laughter for ten minutes. "Hopelessly old fashioned" is my best guess as to why they refuse to use the obvious and best choice. And this goes back even earlier--and with volume knobs too. Factory and after-market car radios had, beginning maybe in the '80s, knobs that LOOKED like knobs but were really switches. You turned them to one side or the other bu that would just trigger to function to electronically run along, ramping numbers up and down for volume and tuning. You had to LOOK at the dial to see where you were instead of just being able to "feel" it the old fashioned way. So a person driving a moving car has to look over at the teeny, poorly lit LCD screen to tune or adjust the volume. Brilliant. One wonders how much needless destruction happened on the highways because of this "machine-first" design. Then... and now.
Ive been to the Munich Design museum, their Braun collection is insane.
I have one of those, along with the ultra rare Braun TP-1 record player, radio combo.
Oh yes, I've seen one of those. A collector friend had one. I don't think he let me touch it!
Very simple but nice I love the colour
OMG this set (or rather what was left of it) was a permanent resident of our kitchen drawer. Already a carcass, its bowels instilled in little Ludwig a lifelong interest in radios. Now an old man, I´d be happy to have this treasure in my kitchen table (dead or alive). Speak of the casing: I then had a different one. It was of light brown leather with holes in front of the speaker. With no lid on it.
THANK YOU SIR for the memories 😊
You are welcome! Thanks for sharing your story.
Another nice radio in your collection, thank you for sharing
always prefer Japanse designs when it comes to radios and such. Braun *prounced brown, have / had nice wrist watches though. I have had a 1950's Braun wooden chassis tube radio and it was brilliant in both design and functionality. Nothing like these later minimalistic designs.
Bravo! So many new products are terrible. There's not one new television that my 90 year old mother can use. And even the simplest flip phone baffles her. Why not the old "UI" we had on wired telephones that worked well for 75 years?
Thanks! You're so right. And even if she could use a new television, could she even hear it? ALL the new TVs I've seen have the speakers pointing out the BOTTOM. The defining consonant and sibilant sounds are highly directional so aiming them at the floor is ridiculous. Older folks especially need those sounds aimed at them, not elsewhere. But then that's how they sell sound bars, isn't it? I feel bad for those who don't know the science of it and "solve" the problem by cranking up their TV volume just to compensate. But shame on the makers of these things who put their customers at such a disadvantage. I question two things. First do these companies know better? I wonder. The other question is, do they even care? I doubt it. The only input they hear from the public is in the form of focus groups, where THEY direct the questions, and in the form of surveys, which THEY write.
Great
O boy, I figure not only BRAUN loves over-engineering: "Look what we can do!" Maybe this thermo was devised by sick minds, who don´t know it. IMHO thermos should be devised by designers having a cold.
Have they NEVER had a cold? It takes empathy to understand the real needs of of the people for whom you are designing. I don't see how good design can ever come out of a lack of empathy. If they have to have a cold in order to empathize enough with their customers, then they lack the empathy necessary to ever be a good designer of products for people.
This reminds me of the luxury German car, Audi. For years this was pronounced AWDEE. NOW all of the sudden we hear OWDEE. No, I'll still say awdee, just like the movie star. I'm quite sure that the Germans pronounce American and British names their way. So for me, it will always be Brawn, and Awdee. BTW, do you find that radio attractive?
Oh yes, and Peking is now Beijing, etc. These things bear a passing resemblance to jargon--changing seemingly at random, and often with no discernible purpose other than to keep the uninitiated in their "place." On the other hand, there are things we always got wrong and should have known better. Ask a citizen of DuBois, Ohio where he lives and you'll see what I mean. There's a street north of Detroit (which is another French name which we entirely butcher), called Lahser. People I knew called it "Lasher." When I pointed out the discrepancy in the way they say it and the way it is obviously supposed to be said, they most emphatically did not want to hear it. As to the radio's attractiveness. I think I find its appearance exactly as it was intended to be, exactly "not unattractive."
And if you run out of the disposable ear caps that goes on the end of that you are s*** out of luck, and I didn't see you put one on it so now you are in violation of code, lol.
Oh yeah! I see you are familiar with this gadget. I do have a few of those disposable plastic caps left. When they're gone, the whole thing goes.