Teenage Boys Hang Out at a Shop Offering Radios for Rent at 35 Cents Per Hour, New York, ca. 1950

American teenagers quickly became obsessed with rock and roll, much to their parents’ alarm. But even if Mum and Dad forbade them from listening to “the Devil’s music” on the family radiogram, they quickly found ways of circumventing the ban.

In the 1950s, RentaRadio in New York rented radios to teenagers for just 35 cents an hour. You had to rent it for a minimum of three hours – more than enough time to catch Alan Freed’s late night radio show Rock ‘n’ Roll Party on WINS.