Museum holds rare radio equipment

[Fansome]

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2015/09/08/museum-holds-rare-radio-equipment/71590962/

Museum holds rare radio equipment
Sarah Taddeo, @sjtaddeo 11:19 a.m. EDT September 8, 2015

American radio programs played starring roles in battling international radio propaganda during World War II and beyond. A rare antique transmitter that broadcast this programming during the Cold War quietly settled at a Bloomfield museum this summer.

The 19-ton piece of equipment broadcast “Voice of America,” a shortwave radio program that brought war news to the world in over 50 languages, in partnership with the U.S. government. The transmitter was housed in a Delano, California, station, and broadcast to Central and South America and the Pacific Rim region.

It was about to be trashed after its station shut down in 2007. But the Bloomfield-based Antique Wireless Association, which sponsors the Antique Wireless Museum, asked the government to use the transmitter for display, said the association’s deputy director Robert Hobday.

“This is all steel and brass, but the story of what this did is the important part,” he said.

The radio program, which is still available internationally, strives to report the unadulterated truth about world events, said Hobday.

Delano was one of three U.S. stations, and about 20 other smaller stations dotted the globe to reach countries under oppressive governments.

“Were it not for Voice of America, our troops in the Pacific would have had no way to find out what was going on at home,” Hobday said.

The Antique Wireless Association spent about $25,000 in privately raised funding to move the transmitter to Bloomfield in several pieces. They plan to outfit it with authentic controls from the 1960s, he said.

“Our challenge is to talk to (visitors) about what freedom cost,” said Hobday. “This was a big part of communications history.”

The transmitter joins a motley collection of rare communications equipment at the museum, including telegraph inventor Samuel Morse’s personal notebook, one of the world’s first cellphones and a replica of the Titanic’s radio transmission room.

It will be the centerpiece of a 3,000-foot museum expansion, which will finish construction late this fall and will include more display space and a 60-seat theater for community productions, said Hobday.

“We accept that we can see television pictures all over the world,” he said. “I think you have to understand where we’ve come from, and what’s behind the technology that defines who we are that we take for granted.”

The museum is funded mainly through private donations of over a thousand AWA members, and volunteer docents lead tours with groups from all over the U.S.

The museum is located at 6925 Routes 5 and 20 in Bloomfield and is open on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturdays from 2 to 5 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults and free for teens and children. The museum is closed Labor Day weekend and other holidays.

For more information or to donate to the museum, go to Antiquewireless.org.

[Pigmeat]

The AWA folks are looking to acquire you next, Al. I told them I wanted fifty dollars and a lifetime supply of chili-dogs. They're thinking it over.

If Corq is still on her cheese kick, I'll counter with seventy five dollars and two lifetime supplies of chili-cheese dogs.

With the discovery of your relatives remains in that South African cave system recently, the demand has shot up for living specimens of Homo Fansomii.

[redhat]

I wish they wouldn't keep putting museums like this with precious gear in places prone to wildfires, earthquakes, ect.  A couple weeks ago, a wildfire in CA destroyed on of the nation's few phone museums, which among other things, destroyed a rare autovon princess phone that Nixon had by his bedside during the cold war.  The place was insured to the hilt, and lost something like $25 Million in artifacts.

I hope nothing like this happens to these AWA folks.

+-RH

[Skipmuck]

The museum is located at 6925 Routes 5 and 20 in Bloomfield

Interesting address! I wonder what is located across the street just down the road a bit at 6770

[Nella F.]

If you're ever in my neck of the woods:
                                          www.sparkmuseum.org

[radiogaga]

And if you're in the north country:  http://www.pavekmuseum.org/index.html
Another interesting place....

rgg