He saw Japanese teenagers listening to heavy transistor radios carried on their shoulders, and had a vision of a smaller stereo which could be held in the hand.
It was also in the 1950s that consumers started to buy transistor powered gadgets, notable among them was the transistor radio, which was small, durable and battery-powered.
When it rained, I would lie on the glider, under its plastic cover, secretly alone, a small transistor radio in my grasp and hoping my favorite song of the moment would come on.
The image of a queen who kept cereal in plastic boxes and fed toast to her corgis while a gruff Philip breakfasted next to her listening to a battered old transistor radio did much to endear.