Radio presets

1938 was a big year for buttons. Radio had already become widespread as the first entertainment technology to appear in the average home. But in 1938, pushbutton radio exploded on the market, appearing almost simultaneously in many radio models by several different makers.

Radio was still fairly new, but the mid 1930s saw a massive growth in the number of new radio stations. Finding them still required a bit of fishing, tuning the dial to the correct frequency to find your favorite radio station. All that fuss! You have to bend over and squint and hurt your back, especially while the guests you are entertaining are growing impatient. What would the neighbors say!

At the time they called it Automatic Tuning and sold it as a way not only to save you time, but in today’s jargon, customize your experience. This was Your Radio. It should reflect Your Favorites. This is a huge turning point in technology history. The simple concept of storing the current setting in a single button introduced both the concept of Save and Favorites to technology. Two key concepts that we take for granted, yet must have started somewhere. The radio button.

I also find fascinating the use of the number 6 here. For some reason that I can’t figure out yet, radio presets always come in sixes, and this pattern started early on. In product design, simply placing six rectangles in ahorizontal row almost automatically puts the “radio” notion in the user’s mind. Six boxes just looks like a radio.

But why six?