Four Valve AC Mains Radio Set

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Radio set (model A104) made by Murphy Radio Ltd

Manufacturer	Murphy Radio
Production years	(unknown)
Production location	(unknown)

Four-valve AC mains radio set (model A104) made by Murphy Radio Ltd – shown in Britain Can Make It exhibition.

One manufacturer invited to display at the exhibition was Murphy Radio Ltd, of Welwyn Garden City. Established in 1930, the company had a reputation for high quality and innovative design. This pioneering ‘baffle’ radio receiver had a distinctive shape that eliminated the poor sound quality of a traditional radio cabinet.

1 How it works
2 Memories
3 In the Science Museum
4 Images
5 Related Objects

[edit] How it works

The baffle is a large, stout board which is intended to eliminate, as far as possible, unwanted sound vibrations from the back of the loudspeaker cone intefering with the wanted vibrations coming from the front. The larger the baffle board the better (in the 1950s hi-fi enthusiasts built them in brick). The large front surface of the Murphy receiver with the loudspeaker in the middle acted as a fairly effective baffle.

[edit] Memories

I certainly remember this object with both kinds of perceptions : the best and the worst ! As my parents, just married, purchased it second hand shortly after the WWII, I have always known it. It was 'the' home radio set for many years, and I liked 'playing' it, as a young boy, especially when using the 'small TV screen' that in fact was the display when tuning for the ultra-short waves, the ones producing those nice 'concrete music' sounds...I remember Mom (still alive and well at 89) told me it was a very fine radio set, when I complained : comparing the thing with my friends' 'modern' sound equipment, I found it rather oldish, ugly, weird and certainly obsolete, despite the above mentioned feature. Worst of all, it happened to be 'bass-less', and this fact alone rendered the object useless in my view despite the fact its sound quality was in fact exceptional for those times ! Our neighbours living in the apartment just above ours, in contrast to my spiritual and classical music loving parents, emitted exciting jazz music, and the magnificent pizz sound of the the double bass charmed my own quite delicate music sense so damn much that the fact jazz happened to be my very first musical love in life is to be traced to that Murphy radio set wrt. our neighbours !It was with great pleasure and without guilt that I triggered the replacement of this strange radio set, and advocated the purchase of a Philips HiFi chain of elements around a Dual disc changer turn table, around age 15. Only later did I eventually, of course, learn to appreciate classical music, around 20, and the deep love of the human voice only reached me at advanced age of about 50... Yet today jazz still flows abundantly through my veins...A few years after my wife and I came back from studies in the US, i.e. around 1976, we bought fine English speakers (B&W 802 Mk I, by then indeed I ended up associating fine sound with English speakers !) running on Phase Linear electronics, around an SME arm on a Lenco turn-table for a musical delight still daily present, (now also with CDs !) with still very high quality trebles ...AND basses ! I even ever owned two double base instruments but had to leave that music learning experience as my wife put me in front of a tough choice : either buying a third one or saving my marriage, but in reality my hands were really far too small (obviously a bad reason too, lol, as girls sometimes become excellent concert base players...)My musically very gifted nephew, a fan of experimental music, got one of my bases, and soon (this is why I discovered this information after a fast googling) he will get the good old Murphy Radio Receiver A 104 of his grandparents... to experiment !

— Samuel Verbiese, plastician artist, Belgium - verbiese@alum.mit.edu