Radios – in private collections and museums

There are hundreds of collections worldwide, related to the radio - microphones, recording systems, QSL cards, TV and radio sets etc. The 2001 edition of the Guinness book wrote about Swedish radio listener Goeran Arad, who had gathered at that time 10,060 radio sets. In 2005 M. Prakash from India had 625 radio sets of different kind. The best collections, of course, can be found in the museums that are divided in two groups: common technical museums and specialized museums for radio and television. Thus for instance the radio station and the tower that broadcast the news on the German invasion on September 1st 1939, situated in Gliwice, Poland, were turned into a museum. There are many museums in Russia, named after the Russian scientist Popov. In Europe there are also lots of “radio museums”, for instance in Christiansfeld in Denmark, where visitors can see over 400 radio sets, or in Furth, Germany, where the collection is dedicated to short waves and radio receivers. One of the most interesting museums of that kind is situated in a small Austrian village, called Feichtlgut. 

Mr. Franz Hatinger receives visitors and explains in details the functions and usage of Tomas Edison’s phonograph, ending with modern radio sets with extravagant design. 

The most interesting radio museum, without any doubts, is situated in the Vatican State. The Vatican Radio Museum was unveiled on May 16 1995 at the 100th anniversary of the radio and in the memory of Guglielmo Marconi. It is situated in the same building some 2 km away from the Vatican, where the first local radio broadcast took place, under Marconi’s guidance. The transmitter was a spark-gap one and it was included into the exposition, along with another one, with coherer. By the way, all the appliances exposed work – the clay phonographs from the 1877 lab of Edison, the loop antenna with 10 sides /currently used with 4 sides for short and medium waves reception/, etc. A total of 180 appliances can be found in the museum in perfect condition. For instance, the rubber microphone that Pope Pius XI used on February 12 1931 to unveil the Vatican Radio, is also exhibited at the museum. There is a great interest towards the first type recorder from the Webster Chicago brand, manufactured in the USA in 1935, as the recordings were made on a reeled metal wire. 

There are lots of other radio museums around the globe. In Bulgaria, a special department of the Technical Museum exhibits different radio devices and sets. 

(Source : Radio Bulgaria's DX Program compiled by Rumen Pankov)