Although Sony were not the first to built an all transistor radio, they were the first company to create successful mass market versions. As with the Walkman, the design classic is not the early 1954 radio, which was the first product made by Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo under the brand name Sony, but the iconic TR-610 from 1958.

This device shows clearly that Sony design was originally an attempt to copy American post war modernism. The early Sony logo using a widely spaced serif font that would not look out of place on the side of Raymond Loewy's Air Force One.