"Frank Dresser" ) writes:
"lsmyer" wrote in message
...

Also, this radio contained some amazing self-generating batteries. They
never ran low, despite the fact that there was no AC plug available for
charging purposes, nor did it have any type of crank-based charging
mechanism. It's possible that the batteries might have been the product of
a
secret military cold-war era attempt at attaining a self-sustaining,
zero-point energy equilibrium.

Ah, that's the easy part. Those 60s transistor radios didn't use much
current. I've got an old Silvertone from that era, and it draws less than
15 mils at low volume settings. It's powered with six D cells, and alkaline
cells would run the radio for two to four hours a day for over a year. Half
an hour a week for a couple of years? Piece o' cake.

That's a good point. QST ran a review of the Baygen windup radio, and pointed
out for the curious that the generator put out very limited power. The
key was a radio that didn't draw much current, and one reason for that
was that the radio put out no more than soemthing like 50mW of audio.

Your point about D cells is also useful. Go back to that vintage, and many
a radio did look like a radio, big and "powerful" so it had the space for
D cells. We've gotten so used to pocket radios that run off 9volt batteries
or a pair of AA cells that we forget that there was a time when much
bigger batteries were part of the radio.

But as has been pointed out, there were various episodes dealing with powering
the radio.

Michael