battery radio

noun, a radio that ran off of large batteries, before electricity was common in homes

“I think we had a battery radio first because we didn’t get hydro until 1948.”

“That speaks for the communications of the day, because it wasn’t ’til some time later that we used to get a battery radio in the fall that would last us through the winter.”

The following quote describes a battery radio without using the term:

“I remember the first radio that we had. It’d be about 1936. RCA Victor, and it was a floor model, but there was a wheelbarrow full of batteries behind that sucker. There was a six-volt wet cell battery, like a car battery.”