still periodically think about Sony clip “one-station radios” from the late 1980s, where you had one earphone/battery unit and tuned to different stations by *swapping physical cards* with art representing each station, and naturally the art is sick as hell

they apparently made 42 of these different radio cards back in the day, for stations in Kanto, Kansai and Tokai, across FM, AM and Shortwave radio frequencies. The system even won a Good Design Award in 1988 https://www.g-mark.org/award/describe/14593

I can’t find a higher quality image than these from a Twitter user, but this is an ad which ran on the back of the October 1989 issue of “Radio Paradise” for the full range at the time, every single one is just impeccable

you can read a bit more about it, and see more up-close photos on this store page, it’s a fascinating little artifact of ‘80s Japan http://web.archive.org/web/20200407015941/https://palette.ocnk.net/product/1124 (Internet Archive link because who knows how permanent the listing will be!)

now the really fun part is I only know these exist because Sony, almost exactly twenty years later, went on to pay homage to them by using this as the basis for a bunch of PSP internet radio players http://web.archive.org/web/20120620003046/http://www.playstation.com/psp-app/radio/en/clip.html

anyway one day I should really get back to my reimplementation of the radio player API so people can play with these without a (networked, which is increasingly challenging these days) PSP haha https://twitter.com/ticky/status/1082607259476144128