"Ancient_Hacker" ) writes:
The 1958 Fords had radios with 12 volt tubes and a 2-transistor power
amplifier. The transistors were 2N256's or thereabouts. If you looked
them up in the GE transistor manual, their high frequency cutoff was
like 4Kc ! Not Mhz or GHz, KHz!


That doesn't sound so great for audio use.

Transistors had to start somewhere. There was a famous article in
the amateur radio magazine "QST" where the author said something about
how transistors could never amount to much, and included something
about their not being able to work at radio frequencies. But it
wsa an early article.

IN retrospect, 4KC seems awful low, and even transistors suitable
for 455KHz IFs seem low, but at the time each increment must
have seemed a big step forward, because it was all so new.

Michael