The term All American Five is a colloquial name for mass-produced, superheterodyne radio receivers that used five vacuum tubes in their design. These radio sets were designed to receive amplitude modulation (AM) broadcasts in the medium wave band, and were manufactured in the United States from the mid 1930s until the early 1960s (FM broadcasting in the United States, while running on a small scale from 1930, only became widely popular in the late 1950s, with the trend towards high-fidelity audio).
By eliminating a power transformer, cost of the units was kept low; the same principle was later applied to television receivers. Variations in the design for lower cost, shortwave bands, better performance or special power supplies existed, although many sets used an identical set of vacuum tubes.
Read more about All American Five: Philosophy, Potential Hazards of The Design, Variations On The Theme, Specific Implementations, Series String Order, Effect On Television Design, Servicing Precautions
Famous quotes containing the word american:
“We talked about and that has always been a puzzle to me
why American men think that success is everything
when they know that eighty percent of them are not
going to succeed more than to just keep going and why
if they are not why do they not keep on being
interested in the things that interested them when
they were college men and why American men different
from English men do not get more interesting as they
get older.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)