GEC 6 volt telephone battery box, late 1920s.

By the mid-1920s, British wireless manufacturers such as GEC (UK) were selling simple radio receiver sets to a rapidly expanding market and thus began the era of popular broadcasting for the home. These domestic radio sets required external power in an age when mains connections were not always available or standardised. Instead, these sets were supplied with accumulator battery boxes such as this teak Gecophone example (missing leather carrying strap) whose design matched those of the radio sets they came with. They were in use for less than a decade – by the early 1930s, British domestic radio sets were commonly setup to be connected to mains electricity and accumulator batteries and the boxes which carried them fell out of use.