The most influential transistor radio design of all time 1958 Sony vintage unboxing

This book calls this radio, the Sony TR-610, the “quintessential transistor radio“ and I would agree--and say it, if I could only pronounce “quintessential.“ This was THE most influential transistor radio of all time, in that it was copied by dozens of other radio makers. Scads of similar looking radios appeared in the years after this 1958 model. Typically they had a speaker grille on the lower front with a metal ring around it, an escutcheon where the brand name appears and in which there is an opening--a dial window--revealing the tuning frequency numbers. Tuning and volume knobs were usually on the side, and a string, a literal, actual string drove the tuning number dial as you turned the knob. Some counter the importance of Sony’s design by pointing to an influence of American radio maker Zenith with its Royal 500 radio but all I see in that comparison is a round speaker grille and a wire stand.