Skip to main content

That Old Radio fondly called Transistor

Ad for Remco Radio
1972 Ad of REMCO Radio & Electricals Manufacturing CO.LTD.
from The Reader’s Digest

A slice of ( radio and other) history from this Ad:

  • November 1949: Remco started commercial production of India’s first multi-band radios.
  • In the same year they were the first to manufacture domestic, control, screened and co-axial cables made of PVC.
  • First Indian company to actively enter into collaboration with a Japanese Firm – Toshiba – to make India’s first electrical watt-hour meters in 1952.
  • First to produce water meters of Swiss design in India in 1956.
  • First to make electronic bandswitches for the Communication Industry in 1958.
  • In the same year, they started production of India’s first electrolytic capacitors
  • In 1967, first to build Indian designed lighting arresters, with nonlinear elements made from basic raw material.
  • In year 1972(the year of this Advertisement), they manufactured the first high-fidelity “Cross-Over Sound” radios in India.

-0-

Two things from the Ad that caught my eye:

The line India can make it on its own – and make it better.
This again is an effect of the 1971 war on Imports-Starved Indian Industry and gets reflected in other similar ads.

The other thing about this ad is that with so many “firsts” under its belt, Remco promised that we would ‘soon be hearing from’ them ‘again – first’.
Searching for the details about this company on the Internet, curiously, I came across an old American radio manufacturer with the same name REMCO ( statistically speaking that would make Remco a fine name for a radio ) but nothing much on this Indian radio manufacturer. Many be the answer lies in the fact that when the next big wave came they had their knobs tuned into some other station.
The Case of Old Radio fondly called Transistor
Old Ad for Radio cases by GarwareThe Doordarshan had already arrived and AIR (All India Radio) played the perfect host for the services( the two were separated in 1976). In 1972 (the year of this particular Ad), television services were extended to Bombay (now Mumbai ) and Amritsar. The stage was set and Doordarshan went truly national in 1982 with the telecast of Asian Games. Radio still retains its charm in India but radio manufacturers do not.

we are
closer to you
than you think

Take the case of your transistor

Garware Plastics Pvt. Ltd

March, 1972

-0-

Check out rest of the Ads in the series here

-0-
You might also like to get the signature tune of All India Radio
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousApr 27, 2008, 9:37:00 PM

    Good Old Radio came to be known as Transistor when Hot Vaccuum Tubes were Repalced with Solid State Transistors.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I always like to hear back :)
However, irrelevant comments and irrelevant links will not be published. Needless to say, same goes for abusive comment and spam. Leaving back links related to the topic is encouraged. I know it can be tempting but try not to leave your email ids, phone nos and CVs in the comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Famous Old Faces of Doordarshan

Some people recall the faces and some people recall the names. Here are images of some of the famous readers and presenters of Doordarshan down the years. If you recognize any of them, leave a comment. [ Update 1 : Most of the faces now have names thanks to helpful comments by olio-gallimaufry ] [ Update 2 : Included image of one of the earliest presenters, Gopal Kaul. Send in generously from personal collection by son, Ashutosh Kaul. Sept, 2010.] [ Major Update 3: Got a tip-off about a documentary about the famous faces of Doordarshan from the makers   of     “The Golden Trail , DD@50 :Special feature on Golden Jubilee of Doordarshan ” from which these caps were taken. I managed to catch the incredible documentary and am adding some more faces/name and part of the docu here. New ones can be found after the image of  Narotam Puri. 30th Oct, 2010]  Pratima Puri. Believed to be the first Doordarshan reader.
176 comments
Read more

Indian Cigarette Vintage Ads

He put a cigarette in his mouth and, as a matter of silent routine, offered one to Gwyn, who said ‘No thanks.”Richard looked at him.”I packed it in.”"You what?”"I stopped. Three days ago. Cold. That’s it. You just make the life choice.” Richard looked up and inhaled needfully. He gazed at his cigarette. He didn’t really want to smoke it. He wanted to eat it. Almost the only thing that he still liked about Gwyn was that he still smoked…Paradoxically, he no longer wanted to give up smoking: what he wanted to do was take up smoking. Not so much to fill the little gaps between cigarettes with cigarettes (there wouldn’t be time, anyway) or to smoke two cigarettes at once. It was more that he felt the desire to smoke a cigarette even when he was smoking a cigarette. The need was and wasn’t being met… While it would always be true and fair to say that Richard felt like a cigarette, it would now be doubly true and fair to say it. He felt like a cigarette. And he felt like a cig
21 comments
Read more

Kishore Kumar, Yodel-ay-ee-oooo Songs, A List

*Updated with corrections pointed out by Bart Plantenga , author of some incredible book on Yodeling including Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World. -0- Kishore Kumar 's brother Anoop Kumar, who we basically know for the line ' O manu tera toh hua ab mera kya hoga ', used to own lots of Austrian music records. And from these records, Kishore Kumar picked up the art of Yodel singing, an art perfected in bathroom and then introduced by him to the world of Hindi film music. According to his biography 'Kishore Kumar: method in madness‎ ' by Derek Bose, "Kishore was a fan of the Swiss singer Tex Norton [* Tex Morton, an Australian cowboy born in New Zealand who sang  in the gene autry / Jimmie Rodgers style ] and the Australian Jimmy Rogers [* Jimmie Rodgers , perhaps the most American and one of the most famous yodelers in the world, famous for his blue yodels ] as well." Although most of these songs by Kishore Kumar are t
18 comments
Read more