Label
Radio, 1929
Atwater Kent Manufacturing Company
Philadelphia, PA
Wood, metal, glass
Gift of David Stone, 1978.14.1a-c
Arthur Atwater Kent was born in Burlington, but moved to Worcester, MA with his family as a child. He spent some time studying at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute but did not graduate, having already begun his own business making small electric motors, generators, fans, and an automobile ignition system of his own design.
In 1921, he began making radio parts, selling them as do-it-yourself kits for early enthusiasts. By 1925, the Atwater Kent Manufacturing Company was the largest maker of radios in the United States. By 1931, they boasted that they had produced over 3 million radios.
Though Kent had started with small kits for enthusiasts, by the late 1920s the company was focusing on high-end, high-quality models. As a result, the Great Depression hit the company particularly hard, and by 1936 its factory in Philadelphia, which had employed as many as 12,000 people at its height, closed.
Many Kent radios were built into furniture pieces, and this table is an example of a particularly elaborate one. It was made by the Kiel Company of Milwaukee, and originally cost $175 when it came on the market in 1929. The company offered installment plans, which made even this high-end piece of technology accessible to the average American. At the time, radios would have occupied the central place in a home that televisions hold today – as a focal point of a room, a primary source of entertainment, and a connection to the outside world.