Fascinating MCM Transistor Radio collection online...  

If you want to study mid century modern form language and aesthetics, this has to be the mother lode for your research. In looking at these transistor radios, I note once again two distinct strands of mid century modern form language and aesthetics. One was full of joy and color and exhuberance like the Silvertone radio below. It corresponds to the same form language one found in 50s and early 60s Detroit cars and in American pleasure craft. The other strand was the more somber, humorless, rational international style. I am not surprised by the dichotomy of form languages, because it is observable in most every consumer artifact of the era. What I am amazed at is how exceptionally well the designers carried out both form langauages.

Question: did in-house designers in this era work in both form languages, or did they tend to specialize? If they were able to do both, they were kind of virtuosic in some ways.

http://www.transistor.org/collection/collection.html#S