Timeline of Radio - Later 20th Century Developments

Later 20th Century Developments

• 1954: Regency introduced a pocket transistor radio, the TR-1, powered by a "standard 22.5V Battery".
• 1960: Sony introduced their first transistorized radio, small enough to fit in a vest pocket, and able to be powered by a small battery. It was durable, because there were no tubes to burn out. Over the next twenty years, transistors displaced tubes almost completely except for very high power, or very high frequency, uses.
• Early 1960s: VOR systems finally became widespread; before that, aircraft used commercial AM radio stations for navigation. (AM stations are still marked on U.S. aviation charts).
• 1963: Color television was commercially transmitted, and the first (radio) communication satellite, TELSTAR, was launched. In the late 1960s, the U.S. long-distance telephone network began to convert to a digital network, employing digital radios for many of its links.
• 1970s: LORAN became the premier radio navigation system. Soon, the U.S. Navy experimented with satellite navigation.
• 1987: The GPS constellation of satellites was launched.
• Early 1990s: Amateur radio experimenters began to use personal computers with audio cards to process radio signals.
• 1994: The U.S. Army and DARPA launched an aggressive successful project to construct a software radio that could become a different radio on the fly by changing software.
• Late 1990s: The digital transmissions began to be applied to broadcasting.