model Tesla Talisman 308U; Czechoslovakian, manufactured 1953-58

Tabletop radio of assymmetric, vaguely 'teardrop' form, made from compression-moulded red-brown Bakelite. A large, round-cornered rotary tuning dial is located on the proper left of the set, the needle is slightly offset to match the streamlined design of the cabinet. To the proper right is the moulded integral speaker grille, backed with woven fabric. Below the dial and the grille are three equally-spaced, white plastic control knobs.

Purchased by the V&A in 1992 from T.G. Parker-Hall [92/1313].

The first successful radio transmission was made by David Edward Hughes (1831-1900) in 1879. Some years later, in 1896, Gugliemo Marconi (1874-1937) patented a system of electromagnetic radio wave communication which, unlike the already-established telegraph system, was ‘wireless’, meaning signals could be heard by anyone with a radio receiver in range of the broadcast. Marconi established the world’s first radio factory in Chelmsford in 1898, where sets were hand-built to high specifications for mostly scientific, governmental and military customers. Another early customer was Queen Victoria who in 1898 had a set installed at Osborne House, Isle of Wight, so she could communicate with the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, as he convalesced aboard his yacht at Cowes.

Military applications meant that radio technology advanced rapidly during the First World War, and in the 1920s regular civilian broadcasting began, changing the domestic experience forever. The previously diverse parts of the radio; the valves, controls, wires and speakers, began in the mid-1920s to be enclosed inside a single cabinet. In this early period, radios were seen essentially as furniture and some companies employed cabinet-makers and well-known furniture designers. As radios were new to the domestic interior, their design had no precedent, which allowed manufacturers to design them creatively. This struck a chord in the late-1920s and 1930s with the expanding synthetic plastics industry; oil-based plastics were also a recent innovation, the first, Bakelite (phenol-formaldehyde), having been successfully synthesised in 1907. The collaboration between industrial designers and manufacturers gave rise to many very modern radio designs, particularly in America. Tastes in Britain remained, in general, more conservative, favouring wooden cabinets or Bakelite cabinets imitating wood. During the Second World War the manufacture of civilian radios essentially ceased in the United Kingdom, with the exception of the ‘Utility’ radio (see V&A CIRC.678-1975) produced under government directive by 42 companies.

Tesla was a large, state-owned electrical technology conglomerate in the former Czechoslovakia, founded in 1921 as Elektra. It was renamed TESLA in 1946, originally after the Serbian-American inventor, Nikola Tesla, but later explained as an abbreviated form of ‘TEchnika SLAboprouda’ (‘weak-current technics’). Tesla enjoyed a monopoly on electrical consumer products in Czechoslovakia, producing nearly all electrical goods in the country until 1989, when the Soviet government was ousted in the Velvet Revolution.

Tesla, a state-owned electrical conglomerate, enjoyed a monopoly on electrical goods in the former Czechoslovakia for over forty years during Communist Party rule. The 308U 'Talisman', produced in the mid-1950s, is somewhat retrospective in design, being reminiscent of 1930s streamlined American sets.

W.28-1992