1964 letterhead
The information that follows is based on a video taped interview with Regency co-founder John R. Pies on May 12, 1991 and conversations since that time. Additional reference information has been added for continuity.
Regency Factory in Indianapolis, Indiana where the TR-1 was Built (1990 photo)
1945-The Beginning of I.D.E.A./Regency
W.W. II had just ended. RCA employees Joe Weaver and John Pies were to be transferred with their engineering group to Camden, New Jersey. John was recovering from a collapsed lung and received a visit from Joe. The visit led to a mutual decision to quit RCA and start their own engineering consulting partnership company with the name I.D.E.A., Industrial Development Engineering Associates in Indianapolis.
Ed
Tudor was hired to stimulate markets for
I.D.E.A. and became president. On July 18, 1947, the company formally
became a corporation. The group worked on several projects for
Mid-West firms through the late 1940's such as a UHF police radio and
by the early 1950's was producing their own products. These efforts
included voltage boosters for countries using substandard voltage, a
resistor production line under I.D.E.A.'s Radell Division and a
television set development program. After building ten television
sets in 1950, the project was dropped because I.D.E.A. was not
competitive against companies like RCA. On the other hand, TV
reception was generally poor in rural areas and this led to the
company's first big money maker, a TV signal booster. The success of
the TV booster product line grew further when Sears had I.D.E.A.
build boosters under Sears' "Silvertone" label.
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TV Signal Boosters were Regency's First Major Product Line. A Booster is Found Just Right of Center on Top of the TV
(right photo: 1954, two months after release of the TR-1)
Electronics seemed to be the future of the company
but the name Industrial Development Engineering Associates sounded
too much like a building contractor. 
One day during a
meeting to discuss the company name, Ed Tudor sat fiddling with a
pack of Regency cigarettes. He thought the name sounded classy and
this prompted the beginning of the Regency Division.
A Crucial Moment in History is Missed by the Giants
Vacuum tubes were king. Bell Labs' 1947 transistor invention (later to earn the Nobel Prize in 1956) was not taken seriously by the major radio manufacturers. Frequency response and power limitations were considered inherent show stoppers for the novel transistor. The up and coming transistor developer, Texas Instruments, needed to get transistors into the market place, but the established electronics companies RCA, Sylvania and Philco did not take the bait. Regency had the vision and radio expertise, and TI had the transistor and financial backing.
TI also had a transistor radio circuit design which Regency found not practical for the commercial market. The first twenty-five prototype units were built with the TI design, but each required manually selecting matched components to make them work (prototype plastic cases were 100% machined, not molded). These units looked nearly identical to the later production model Regency TR-1 radio, but cost per unit was prohibitive for the consumer market with the TI circuit design. Commercialized use of the transistor was still at bay.
Regency's master
engineer, Dick
Koch (pronounced 'coke'), developed the
key circuit design that put the radio on the market. His circuit
allowed the tolerance of production run components to be directly
soldered into boards without manual selection.
Regency patented the historic design of the
Regency TR-1 radio with specific details given all the way down to
the electrical value of each component (patent number
2,892,931, submitted in 1955 and issued by
the U.S. Patent Office in 1959). This design is discussed in great
detail by Robert Simcoe in the 2004 fall issue of AMERICAN
HERITAGE OF INVENTION & TECHNOLOGY
(vol. 20, #2) [click here for synopsis of article]. In this article, Simcoe further
notes that the TR-1 triggered the miniature discrete components
market, and it's compact design brought the first widely used
application of printed circuit boards into commercial
products.
Texas Instruments was not satisfied-TI wanted to claim the radio design was completely theirs. Regency owed TI a fair sum of money and was encouraged to reduce that debt by selling the ownership of the patent for $25,000. TI president Erik Jonsson was personally involved with the negotiations to clear the Regency patent. Frank Mascarich, a Western Electric Patent Office attorney, was assigned to the job. Jonsson later told Regency's John Pies that his heart sank when Mascarich walked into the kick-off meeting. Mascarich looked at Jonsson and revealed "I know you, you are the guy who refused to hire me when I first got out of college."
Mascarich was a New York attorney from the younger generation and very impressed that Regency had a patent for an application of the transistor whereas most patents at the time were focusing only on the transistor itself. He commented "Regency was a thorn in the side of the industry which in-turn stimulated the practical application of the transistor." The established radio company giants could no longer ignore the inevitable fate of electronics evolution.
What was the Market Like?
John Pies recalls that the October 1954 release of the Regency TR-1 missed a fair amount of Christmas sales since the production capacity was below the demand. The $49.95 tag may sound high for 1954 money, but it turned out to be a well targeted price many consumers would pay. On the other hand, profit margin was still so low that Regency struggled to keep going. In mid-1955 the National Association of Manufacturers recognized the importance of Regency's achievement by producing a film featuring the production facilities used to manufacture the TR-1. Video/audio excerpts from this historic film can be viewed at http://people.msoe.edu/~reyer/regency/index5.html (courtesy of Steve Reyer).
A Japanese company got wind of the business potential and entered the transistor radio sales business in 1955. This led to the company's first big product success and later, a domination of the miniature electronics industry. It's name was finally changed so Americans could pronounce it. The new name became Sony. Pies chuckles when recalling Sony's sales ploy after they announced release of the world's smallest radio. "The radio would not quite fit in your shirt pocket, so Sony provided their salesmen with special shirts carrying oversized pockets."
In The Portable Radio in American Life, Michael Brian Schiffer writes "The importance of the TR-1 in stimulating demand for transistors was especially clear at IBM. Thomas J. Watson, Jr., head of IBM, bought several hundred of the new sets. Not only did he give TR-1s to various IBM executives, but he used them to goad his engineers into building computers with transistors. Comfortable with the familiar tube circuits, computer people had been reluctant to embrace the new technology. An impatient Watson finally ordered that IBM build no more machines with tubes after June 1, 1958. Whenever engineers complained about the decision to Watson, he just gave them a TR-1."
In the closing of Schiffer's book is written "......It calls to mind the heroic efforts of Texas Instruments and I.D.E.A. to produce rapidly and market the world's first transistor radio. The achievement of the Regency TR-1 exemplifies what American engineers can accomplish under high pressure through teamwork."
Don Pies, son of John Pies
1957 letterhead
John R. Pies
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business card and personal TR-1
John
Pies (pronounced 'peas') graduated from Rose-Hulman in Electrical
Engineering in 1939, and finally retired from the electronics
industry at 81 years old. He spent the final years of his career at
MicroFab Technologies, where he was named on 10 patent awards.
In 2001, he shared residence at the same Dallas care facility as transistor pioneer Gordon Teal (Teal had worked at Bell Labs with the original Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley transistor group, and then directed Texas Insturments' transistor research department in 1952). Shortly before reaching his 87th birthday, John Pies passed away on January 4, 2004.
postscript - Additional Regency Company Background
Japanese Competition Squeezed Regency Out of
the Portable Radio Business in the Early 1960's
Regency sadly conceded from the portable radio business as recorded
in the following announcement in a 1961 stock prospectus: "In the
course of the development of its transistor radios the Company was
granted three patents covering transistor circuitry. Though these
patents were subsequently assigned to Texas Instruments, Inc., the
Company reserved the right to use such patents and to grant licenses
to certain foreign corporations. It is believed that circuitry
contained in a majority of the transistor radios shipped into this
country by the Japanese infringe upon these patents. Steps have been
taken to recover damages as a result of this alleged infringement and
settlement negotiations have been commenced. Since the appearance of
the Japanese transistor radios in the United States the market for
the Company's models has steadily decreased. The severe price
competition brought about by the Japanese imports has compelled the
Company to gradually withdraw from the production of consumer
transistor radios."
Regency's Business Grew Despite the
Competition
Regency shifted its market direction and sales exceeded fifty-million
dollars in 1980. The company went through a number of confusing name
changes. Here is a timetable of some of the company's names and
organizations:
