Transistor Museum Oral History Joe D'Airo Trans-Aire Transistor Radio Page 6

A Transistor Museum Interview with Joe D’Airo

Transistor History at Trans-Aire Electronics Inc

Trans-Aire and Classic General Electric Germanium Transistors

Many of the Trans-Aire radios from the 1950s and early 1960s used GE fallouts. Shown above left are Trans-Aire tested/relabeled GE fallouts documented by Joe, with these comments: “It is likely that Trans-Aire sorted them and marked them, as with Raytheon and later Fairchild. They probably marked them USA to assure that there was no question about import tariffs. Here is a picture of GE parts where they stuck labels on them instead of paint. These were marked with 2N numbers. I imagine this was done for ease of repair, since I doubt that these parts fully met the 2N specs, otherwise they wouldn’t have been fallouts! I have pictures of other GE parts labeled with TA series numbers.” The chassis shown at upper right is from a 1960s Saxony “Ten Transistor” radio – note the extensive use of GE fallouts, some stamped and some with paper labels with TA part numbers. The chassis shown at the lower left is from a 1960s Harlie “Eight Transistor” radio – again, note the extensive use of GE fallouts, all with paper labels. Of interest is the use of “PNP” labeled transistors in the Saxony and “NPN” labeled transistors in the Harlie – the use of both these types of fallouts would add a level of complexity to the design of the radio TA circuits that could only be justified by very low cost fallouts. The schematic shown at lower right is an insert from a 1960s Saxony “Six Transistor” radio, and provides additional information about TA transistor color codes, id codes and part numbers. For example, in many TA radios the Osc/Conv transistor could be identified as “CV”, or with red paint or with a 2N412 part number; the IF transistor could be identified as “IF”, or with yellow paint or as 2N410; the audio driver transistor could be identified as “DR”, or with blue paint or as 2N406; and the Push-Pull Output transistor could be identified as “OP”/“PA”, or as 2N408. This method of fallout identification seems to have been used for many early GE/Ray era Trans-Aire radios with PNP transistors. Different paint and numbering methods were used for NPN radios, later PNP radios, and Fairchild and Motorola silicon transistor fallouts.

Go To D’Airo Oral History, Page 7

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