By the late 1950s, postwar prosperity enabled Motorola to advocate a radio in every room in the house (as shown in the graphic that’s partially visible here). The radios were styled appropriately. These designs were made affordable, and more reliable, by the advent of printed circuit boards, fabricated initially from compressed cardboard. Vacuum tubes still imposed design limits, while the exclusive availability of AM sound meant that tone controls were irrelevant, and thus mostly nonexistent.