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Earlier I introduced you to one of the first pieces in my ever growing collection of vintage stuff, a transistor radio called the Emerson 888 “Explorer.” When I did research for that post, I discovered that my Explorer was more than just a cute transistor. It was, in fact, one of a series of radios Emerson introduced in the late 1950s and early 1960s, named after, and designed to honor, rockets that the U.S. developed in the early days of space exploration.

That triggered my own personal space race. A quest to get one of each of the rocket-radio models to complete my collection. So for I’ve been partially successful. I’ve gotten six of the seven. The search continues for the last one.

In the meantime I’d love to introduce one of my latest acquisitions. Vanguard, an infamous rocket that inspired one of the coolest radio designs that I have ever seen.

While the Explorer was a beautiful combination of blue and silver, there was no indication from the design of the radio of its link to the space race, except for the name “Explorer” etched on the back.

There is no such ambiguity when it comes to the Vanguard model. There’s a rocket right on the front cover. It looks like it’s flying right through the word Vanguard and the letters 888 shine under the name. Although beautiful, it doesn’t seem to me that the drawing is historically accurate.

 Check out this picture of a post-war army missile called the Navaho. Here’s the Vanguard. As you can see, the actual Vanguard didn’t have wings which flared out at the base like this drawing.

Details, details.

Still, the drawing showcases the feeling of “coolness” that surrounded America’s efforts to launch into the great beyond, even if the facts weren’t accurately represented. Which is just as well since the actual Vanguard mission wasn’t quite a success, at least at first.

The hopes and dreams of an entire nation weren’t supposed to rest on Vanguard’s shoulders, even though the government picked the sphere to be the first artificial satellite put into orbit. Instead of a symbol of American superiority in space, Vanguard started out as a symbol of American ingenuity as the U.S. contribution to the International Geophysical Year, 1957-1958.

But then, on October 4th 1957, the Russians surprised everyone by putting their own satellite, Sputnik, into orbit first and the space race was on. Pressure built and the navy rushed to launch Vanguard before it was ready. The rocket exploded on the pad and newspaper headlines screamed: “Flopnik” “Kaputnik” and “Stayputnik.”

Instead, Explorer One was the first piece of U.S. hardware successfully launched into the void. All hope wasn’t lost. Vanguard made it successfully off the ground a few months later and put America’s second satellite into space.

Here is where Vanguard got the last laugh, because it’s still up there! The other satellites fell out of orbit and burned to dust in the atmosphere long ago, but little Vanguard keeps chugging along. According to Wikipedia still giving scientists data on the effects of the sun, moon and atmosphere on satellite orbits.

Now that’s durability, a trait my Emerson shares with its namesake. This radio, with its eight transistors, spiffy speaker and shiny gold dial still works just fine, despite the advancement of father time which has made both the radio and the rocket obsolete.

One other feature of my radio is nearly obsolete, thank goodness.

Check out the dial. Notice the two little triangles? One sits between 16 and 10, and the other between 7 and 6.

When I first looked at the unit I scarcely gave them a second glance. It also didn’t register that the same triangles are displayed in the very same location on the other transistors in the series. The meaning of the symbols didn’t become clear until the arrival of my Vanguard, because it had something my Explorer didn’t. The original box and operating instructions.

While the radio itself wasn’t difficult to operate, one paragraph in the booklet grabbed my attention.

It was titled “Civil Defense Symbols” and it said the radio was designed to be used as a civil defense receiver. Those symbols pointed toward the two frequencies dedicated to giving information during an emergency, 640 and 1240 kilocycles.

Good to know that, as nuclear death and destruction was barreling your way, you could quickly tune to one of those frequencies to learn exactly how screwed you were!

I suppose it gave folks the illusion that they could do something, even if such dire events spiraled out of control. I imagine many people fell asleep clutching their radio’s to their chest in order to snap them on immediately if the time ever came.

However inadequate such a feature was, I did a little more digging and discovered that the stations were part of a method of emergency broadcasting called Conelrad (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation.) According to Wikipedia, by law all radio sets manufactured between 1953 and 1963 had to have the two frequencies marked by the civil defense symbol.

There also was information about stations popping on and off the air to keep enemy aircraft from homing in on the signal. Also ignoring the USAF who might have had a hand in stopping such bombers…

Anyway, as I said earlier Conelrad was nearly obsolete. Turns out it was the forefather of the Emergency Broadcast System I grew up with and the Emergency Alert System we have today.

Both of the later systems branched out from just providing information about a nuclear attack, to warning about more common threats. These include severe weather situations like flash floods and tornadoes, as well as Amber Alerts and other civic emergencies where people need to be informed of the situation right away. So instead of clutching our transistor radios in an emergency, now our cell phones fulfill that function.

And instead of a tiny satellite opening the door to the stars, we have stepped up to building space stations, going to the moon and maybe one day to Mars.

All of this progress and promise is symbolized, at least to me, by one simple device. My wonderful Vanguard edition of the Emerson 888 line of transistor radios.

Truly a Glorious example of Vintage Stuff!