Window to the world  

Amy's post about her first transistor radio set me rummaging to see if I still had mine, and I eventually found it in a box in the shed. I was terribly fond of it, so I thought it unlikely I would have thrown it way, although it stopped working long ago. Mine was an AWA, an Australian brand. I couldn't find any pictures of it on the net, so here are some photos of mine. It is the most amazing dark turquiose and white plastic, and just look at the crud on it!

Like Amy, I was given it for my birthday when I was 10 or 11. (The psycholdelic writing was done a few years later). I distinctly remember the exhilaration of realizing that it gave me a window on the whole world. (I felt the same about the web when I stumbled into my first virtual community). I went through batteries at a great rate, probably because I so often went to sleep listening to it, so much so that my dad soldered those extra connections in so that I could connect it easily to a big battery. I used to think the circuit board looked a minature city.