Jim's Antique Radio Museum
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Early RADIO MUSEUM PAGE
Early RADIO MUSEUM PAGE
Early RADIO MUSEUM PAGE
When I started my radio museum it was on the 2nd floor in a big metal shop building. This proved to be a problem for those with physical limitations so I eventually moved the museum to the ground floor when it outgrew the upstairs room. These are some of the wooden radios dating from the 1920's up through the 60's. I think my "newest" wood radio is from the 70's, but I keep that one in the house.
The museum continues to grow and I am approaching 400 radios in my collection, not counting all the other electronic related items, like test gear. When this page was started I had only around 200 radios so I will soon have to update the page to show how the museum has grown. I am in the process of finding more room to display radios.
A CLOSE UP OF SOME OF THE WOOD RADIOS
This is a look of some of the wood radio shelves.
You can see radios from various decades. The two radios on the 2nd shelf from the top (not counting the top of the cabinet) are from the 20's. The radio in the right column, 2nd from bottom is 1937 and there is one from the 30's on the very top in the center. The rest of the radios are from the 40's and 50's.
MORE WOOD RADIOS
This is a close up of more of the wood radios. You can see a Radiola 20 from the 1920's on the very top-right and just to the left of that is a Type-E Atwater Kent speaker from that same decade. The speaker goes with an Atwater Kent model-40 which is only partially seen on the left of the speaker. Just below the speaker are 3 DELCO radios, with the plastic face wooden case radio on the left, a nice wood cabinet Delco in the middle and another Delco with slide tuning to the right of that. There are several radios in the left column that are portable types with wooden cases, but with some sort of leatherette covering over the wood, which was very popular in that era.
MORE RADIO MUSEUM WOOD RADIOS
Here you can see more of the wood radios, with the exception of the AK-40 on the very top. The radio on the top shelf to the very left is interesting because it is one that has both the OLD FM band and the NEW FM band. It is difficult these days to find a radio with just the old FM band so I was very pleased to find this one with both FM bands and an AM band. These radios are mostly from the 1940's - 1950's. Another very interesting radio is on the second shelf from the top at the right side. It is the one with the folded extendable antenna sitting on top of it. This is a Learavian radio that has three bands. One band is for Aircraft communication. Another band is for Aircraft Beacons and the remaining band is standard broadcast AM stations. The antenna extends to 8 feet. A close up and better description of most of these radios can be found on the other pages.
PLASTIC RADIOS
Plastic radios come in all shapes and sizes. The colors tend to run to black, brown or various shades of "off-white". However many other colors are also to be found. Many of these are clock radios and there are a couple of novelty radios in the mix. When you talk about color, I like the radio on the 3rd shelf down on the right that has a mint green front and a chocolate brown cabinet (sorry but the ture green color does not show up in this photo). On the shelf on the left, one up from the bottom are two Radio Direction Finder radios that were popular on boats before the advent of Loran or GPS. You could use these radios to find shore stations and then ploting the angle from two shore stations you could determine your position (on a chart) at the point where the two lines intercepted. Pretty cool technology for its day, but it required some work on the part of the user.
A FEW MORE PLASTIC AND MISC.
This shelf shows a few more of the plastic sets and a couple of metal radios. There is even a Zenith Transoceanic model 500 on the lower right. I really like the cabinet on the white radio on the 2nd shelf down, on the left, but unfortunately its cabinet got some pretty bad cracks in it when it was shipped to me. I may still try to do some fancy cabinet repair to get this one restored.
NOVELTY and TRANSISTOR RADIOS
These are some of the novelty radios in my collection I didn't get all the novelty radios put on this shelf yet, but most of them are here. Since I have so much left over space on this set of shelves I will have to try to add some more radios of this type. I really like the Talking Head radio on the right and the On-The-Air radio just to the left of that. I don't TRY to collect the transistor radios, but when I see them for just a buck or two at the flea markets I just can't resist.
NOT JUST RADIOS
The museum contains a lot of other antique electronic equipment. Some of this is related to radio, such as the signal generators, and other test equipment, but others are just interesting pieces of electronic gear from the past. For example, at the very top, to the center from the left, is an ancient battery charger for car batteries. You can see there is quite a variety of STUFF on these shelves, including intercoms, telephones, speakers, a CB radio, power supplies and electronic keyers. You name it, this set of shelves has quite a variety of electronics.
HALLICRAFTERS COLLECTION
Everything on these shelves was made by Hallicrafters. Most of the radios are S-38 of various models, but there are many other types of Hallicrafters in the bunch. On top is a recent addition of a TO-Keyer, HA-1, which has special meaning to me since I built one of these in Jr. College from scratch for my final ET project lab. It was a success for Hallicrafters and was also a success for me!
SOME OF THE BOAT ANCHOR RADIOS
These shelves contain some of my boat anchor radios. This is only about half of them. On the right top are some National Radios along with a NCX-3 and on the bottom right is the famous National HRO-500. But, above that is a portable wind up record player made by Columbia in 1939. NON RADIO MUSEUM PIECE: CODE PRACTICE PAPER TAPE MACHINE
NON RADIO MUSEUM PIECE: CODE PRACTICE PAPER TAPE MACHINE
This is an example of a musuem piece that is not a radio. This military version of a paper tape reader for morse code practice was donated to the Museum by a friend. This type of machine was used in the classrooms for learning Morse Code. These were also used to administer the Code Test to amateur radio applicants. This machine is in such good condition, actually museum condition, that I doubt it was ever used much. The machine also came with a wooden box full of code tapes.