Transistor Museum Oral History Joe D'Airo Trans-Aire Transistor Radio Page 9

A Transistor Museum Interview with Joe D’Airo

Transistor History at Trans-Aire Electronics Inc

The Last Trans-Aire Radios

Joe mentions that he doesn’t know the exact date of Trans-Aire’s demise, but he does remember that his father, Leonard D’Airo, who had worked at Trans-Aire since the mid 1950s as an RF engineer, left the company in June of 1969, and that this date was near the end for the company. The final models of Trans-Aire radios were produced at the Hong Kong facility and would likely be from this late 1960s/early 1970s timeframe. Shown above is an example of a Trans-Aire 15 transistor AM/FM which is representative of these “final” Trans-Aire radios. Although manufactured using silicon transistors and in Hong Kong, this radio clearly shows a strong connection to the Trans-Aire radios manufactured in the US fifteen years earlier using germanium fallout transistors. At top left are a set of silicon fallout transistors manufactured by Fairchild in the mid 1960s, and sold to Trans-Aire as scrap. Joe salvaged these Fairchild fallouts from the Trans-Aire facility in NY prior to closure. Note the use of paint color codes on these fallouts to indicate best circuit use, just as had been done with germanium fallouts from the 1950s. It seems that Trans-Aire was able to continue successfully its low cost radio production model, even through dramatic technological and business changes for US transistor manufacturers - from germanium transistors manufactured in the Northeast by established electronics companies like Raytheon and GE to silicon transistors manufactured in the West by newly formed semiconductor companies like Fairchild and Motorola. A closeup of the radio chassis shows four different types of silicon transistor fallouts – two Fairchild audio devices with Green paint (audio output?), an unmarked small TO-92 device with a Blue dot (audio driver), a TO-98 device with a paper label, and a small Fairchild house-numbered transistor with a date code of 1968. This radio is well made, still operates with excellent reception on both Am and FM, and is stamped “Made in Hong Kong”.

Go To D’Airo Oral History, Page 10

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