There were a lot of radio manufacturers with hyphenated names (e.g.Grigsby-Grunow, Sparks-Withington, Stromberg-Carlson, Wilcox-Gay) but this was named for one man, Arthur Atwater Kent.

Atwater Kent made a number of radios using the same basic cabinet design. The metal can was supposedly cheaper to make than the wooden boxes that were the norm well into the 1940s, yet the only other company I aware that a similar cabinet was Crosley with their Bandbox. As they ended up going back to wooden cabinets in the 1930s, I assume the metal cabinet experiment was ultimately a failure.

I believe this is a Model 42 radio made in 1928. It was priced at $86 without tubes. I bought this from an online auction and haven't physically seen it yet; and the photographs were acceptable but not great. The speaker is a Model F2 from 1929 and would have cost around $20. I paid $10 for both. Probably also without tubes.

From what I've been able to gather, the design started as the Model 33/36/49, which used DC power on the board and needed a "power pak" power supply to use household AC. The next generation was the 40, 42, 52, 56 and 57, which had the power supply on-board and used an 80 tube as the rectifier. According to advertisements, the 42 was a 40 with a voltage control on the line. A Model 44 was basically the same but had a 4th RF amp.

Tube compliment: three 26s as RF amplifiers and another as the first AF amplifier, one 27 as the detector, one 71A as a 2nd AF amp, and our old friend the 80 rectifier.

Reference

Radio Museum's Model 42

Service docs are in Rider's Perpetual Troubleshooter's Manual Vol 1., p

Current status: purchased from online auction--will expand this when it arrives.