The home of the future

For my first ever post of this blog, a blog that doesn't have a very clear order in which matter is presented, a blog that doesn't aim to be the best source for learning about the history of science and technology but rather to be a fun place to look back at how things were and where they went from there.
For this first post I selected a one-page article from Popular Electronics, printed in August 1955.

Raytheon's new "Radarange" roasts a turkey in one hour, boils steaks in three and a half minutes, cooks corn and bakes potatoes in a few seconds - yep, that's the granddaddy of the ubiquitous microwave oven.

Let's have a look at a page from Popular Science, October 1955:

Lovely transistor-based radios - and a lady enjoying some nice Jazz or bluegrass with her very portable radio. She could take it with her on a bicycle trip without even noticing the weight.

A battery-powered phonograph (turn-table player) - perfect for outdoors parties, not so great for jogging with it.

In 1955 the transistor, the first solid-state device capable of amplifying an electric signal, was not anymore a breakthrough technology, though the vacuum tube was still king in the marketplace. In the "Transistors Take Over Portables" column, the author actually mean electron tube-based portables - there were battery-powered portable radios that used vacuum tubes that were somewhat sparing in their power consumption.