Radio

A harbinger of things to come, this 1940 Belmont tabletop radio in streamlined Art Deco style set the standard for portable radios in their glory years following World War II. While many radio manufacturers touted wartime advances in technology to sell their radios after the war, key advances in radio design and technology had actually occurred before the war. Revolutions in plastic production and advances in technology in the 1930s had made it possible for manufacturers to produce smaller radios in seemingly infinite colors and varieties, like this cream-colored Belmont radio made of Bakelite. Its asymmetrical Art Deco design with curves and horizontal wraparound lines anticipates the motion-obsessed design ideals of the postwar years. It mirrors the heightened sense of mobility that would be epitomized by the Airstream trailer in postwar America - though the Airstream, too, was first developed in the 1930s. By 1940 there were nearly 50 million radios in American homes. Nearly 90% of all households owned one, and the average listener tuned in for almost five hours a day. After World War II, the colorful variety of tabletop radios dominated the market.