Braun Exporter radio, vintage Emerson 747 tube radios 1950s

The Braun Exporter portable radio was made in Germany from 1954 through 1956. For export, one would assume.
Yes, and they didn't export a whole lot of them, if their relative rarity is any sort of measure of that--and I'd say it was. If you saw my video on the Braun T3 transistor radio you heard me do the unthinkable--and that is to be critical of Braun's much vaunted approach to design, especially in a recent digital thermometer I discuss there and which I found utterly unfit for use.
And I'm going to do the unthinkable again with this radio. I'm going to dare to question--just a little bit--Braun's high and mighty reputation as a style leader. Now don't get me wrong. I think this is a gorgeous radio and I surely do like this underpainted front. To a rube like me, the underpainting really makes this radio. I'm of course talking about this generous clear plastic panel on the front, with its textured and gold painted underside that looks thick and rich. The fact that this panel covers the ENTIRE front, well, things like this are why Braun enjoys an almost God-like status for its industrial design. Braun products are universally revered by product designers and critics who go simply giddy over anything Braun produces. So if this is styling innovation, what is THIS? This is the Emerson 747 pocket radio and it's from 1953, a year earlier than the Braun Exporter. How can that be? How can the Emerson radio's similar design PRECEED the Braun's innovative design? Emerson. From New Jersey! Well, I guess you know how... and I'll just leave it at that.
I know of no earlier radio than this Emerson to have an entirely underpainted front, entirely exposed. That's because such a front was thought to need protection if it was going to last. A crack that may occur in regular opaque plastic is seen as just a crack. Unsightly maybe, if you even notice it, but just a crack. But in an area of CLEAR plastic, a crack isn't so forgivable. Such an area isn't just cracked, it's BROKEN. So that's why when earlier radios were made with underpainted fronts, like these from 1947, they had a lid or cover to protect the plastic. That lid may ALSO be plastic, but it would be opaque plastic. Radios with lids weren't going to fit in your coat pocket, and that was Emerson's goal with their 747 model. Eliminating the lid was a space saving tradeoff many felt like making. And if the radio's front got broken, oh well, you could just buy another one. Our disposable culture didn't spring out of nowhere.
The Braun Exporter is a tube radio, not a transistor radio, and in this example we find Telefunken tubes. These are the standard cylindrical tubes seen in most portable radios, not the flat subminiature tubes used in the pioneering Emerson. As tube radios, both the Braun and Emerson require two different batteries--one to light up the tubes and the other to power the radio itself.
There's a monster plug here for plugging into a base of some sort--when I first got this radio I wondered what sort of base?--a power base for saving batteries when using the radio at home?--an external speaker base with or without power? Actually, I've even seen such plugs on the bottom of radios like this used for plugging them into the dashboard of a car.
Well, I managed to get that mystery solved when I was lucky enough to find this, a white example of the Braun Exporter,.. with the base. This base has no speaker, it just delivers power to the radio in order to save batteries. Sometimes in a design like this, rechargeable batteries are used. I don't think that was the case here, but I have no way of knowing for sure.
It's a good looker in white, and a good looker in the maroon too.
On the bottom of the back it says "Foreign." I guess that's to be expected on a product named "Exporter."