Funny posts, when I read sinister's I lost my soda through the nose, almost taxed my laptop.
These battery packs, or tubes, were standard among most manufacturers in the preboombox portable days (or as bibox posted...transistors). Most manufacturers never really used a battery compartment so to speak because the old boxes were simply boxes with no molded battery comopartment. Back in these days they designed an area within the box where the battery would be placed but used tubes to confine the batteries. (Remember the 9volt batteries they would have slack in the wire that the battery clipped into. They would use a piece of sponge to keep the battery from bounding around)
Later on, in the boombox era, as the world of plastics took over (remember the famous line from the
1967 movie The Graduate??? Think about your future in "plastics".....), they began replacing metal, leather and everything else with plastic and eventually a confined and molded battery compartment evolved.
But still when you have to swap 10 batteries at a beach or picnic, you're screwed........it's like jack in the box.......BOINGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!! The oldschool battery tubes are awesome, it's another revolutionary element of boomboxes
Here's an example of a leather boombox that has the tubes mid to late 60's, not sure?
Here's an example of a modern molded plastic battery compartment from the "Toshiba RT-S983" (WX-1) Boombox.
