Creating a vintage radio collection from scratch

[Paul_RK]

Clarke and Smith, hmm... worth considering for the 100 model collection, not, to me, for the 20, where four or five sets at most have to represent a decade. I don't know how much dominance they had even of the schools market. I can't remember meeting one at school: my own primary school had a Hacker Mayflower II and Dansette Conquest, after that I recall a Hacker Gondolier and a Ferrograph or two but no radio at all.

I'm surprised the thread isn't attracting more discussion, whether by way of other members' suggested lists of 20 core sets, or along the lines of, x needs to be there, or y might be a better choice than z. My copy of Radio! Radio! is still hiding in a box somewhere, I'd likely have changed a thing or two if able to consult it. I suppose to me the absolute golden age of radio in the home was the tail end of the 1930s: post-war austerity limited almost all 1940s designs, and after that radio in most households was somewhat sidelined while portability gained a relevance it hadn't previously had. It felt odd to tack on the Panasonic following a 17 year gap, but I think of the model as a developmental peak to which the industry never returned - a larger collection could show more of what else was going on in the '70s-'80s and the way some of the 9000's features quickly percolated into far smaller, lighter and more affordable sets.

Paul

[Valvepower]

Hello,

A few more (I apologise for the duplicates)....

Agree with merlinmaxwell, Perdio – there are plenty to choose from.

Agree with Paul and G6Tanuki the Bush TR130 – maybe one with the 1960’s pirate stations on the dial?.

Agree with hamid_1, Radio with a digital display for example the Sony ICF-2001D, CF-7600D and ICF-7600DS – this is where the old-style cord dial gave way to a digital display.

B&O Beolit 600 – either an early model or one of the later slimmer Colouradio models.

ITT Tiny Super – a nice example of an early 70’s AM/FM portable.

Portable Stereo radio (Mini Boombox) for example SANYO M6900 Stereo Radio Cassette Recorder.

Radio Cassette Player (Walkman FM/AM) WM-F2085.

Decca DMR88 for its contemporary styling.

Grundig 3028 GB Marlborough – typical of a ‘piano key' radio – and it don’t sound too bad either.

Murphy A100 for the second set market.

DiscaSET combined 45 single record player and radio.

Sinclair Micromatic.

Romac Personal 106 – Early B7A portable.

This is at a tangent but there are the Electronics radio sets like the Phillips EE8/EE20 and Radionic.

Terry.

[G6Tanuki]

What about including a "Barker 88" if only to make the point that in times-past a radio was just as likely to have been bought as an item-of-furniture from a furniture-shop/department-store than from a specialist radio/TV-dealer?

And to highlight the number of radios that were made by smaller sub-contract-manufacturers rather than those big brands who both made the radio and got to put their logo on the front.

[Lucien Nunes]

Some more good suggestions there.

Clarke & Smith ought to be covered in our public-address / commercial audio section, although at the moment we have just a couple of bits of theirs. I would like a complete set of matching speakers to go up around our walls, and there was a time when I thought we might get a complete school-full of them, but it didn't come off.

For the purpose of this thread I am focusing solely on domestic radio. FWIW it is rather against our ethos to compartmentalise radio, hifi, TV, military comms etc. One of the core ideas of MEET is to bring together and cross-connect different electronic and electrical disciplines that traditionally have been kept separate as a results of de-facto existence of topic-specific museums. But to stop this thread spawning too many tangents I thought a tightly defined boundary was helpful.

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by Valvepower

Agree with hamid_1, Radio with a digital display for example the Sony ICF-2001D, CF-7600D and ICF-7600DS – this is where the old-style cord dial gave way to a digital display.

The Panasonic RF-9000 would cover that moment too, indeed it and the ICF-2001 seem to have been the first two domestic radios with microprocessor control. Could be room for both in a collection of 100 sets, as they're as different as the price differential ($3,800 and $330) suggests.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...lgQ6AF6BAgbEAM

I agree there's a strong case for a piano-key Continental table set alongside or instead of the FenMan II, as instances of receivers which made good use of the audio potential of FM broadcasting: and/or a modest UK set with FM, something like the Bush VHF90 or Ultra FM950, reflecting that most listeners weren't very enthused by the new system.

Paul

[Richardgr]

The evolution of the radio is not dissimilar to the evolution of the home computer. They started out as a kit of parts for the hardened enthusiast, and then were expensive tools that did not need an expert to maintain them. Then once there was a killer app - spreadsheets for computers, music for radios - they were available at a price to a select few, and then the speed of the technology change got faster and faster as they were priced more and more keenly, and penetrated every market.

In parallel the apps for computers had to be created, and the radio stations for radios, so there is a parallel thread here that dictates the success of the radio/computer. Which was the chicken and which was the egg?

By around 1937 the basic circuit of a radio had more or less evolved and did not really change so much until the transistor replaced it. Similarly with PCs - the only real change in hardware in recent years is the RAM disk, so most of the radical changes occurred in a 30 year period.

When you look at a radio from 1922, close to the birth of the vacuum tube, and then compare it with one from 1937, it really is incredible to think how much happened in 15 years, with 7 pin tubes soon to be available. Exciting times to have been an enthusiast!

I think it would be nice to capture the speed of the technology change, as opposed to styling changes that were trying to get people to buy the same thing twice.

But from a styling point of view, I like how clean and timeless the styling of the Double Decca 46 is. Is this a reaction to the end of the war, and new thinking?

[Valvepower]

Been thinking…

After one the presenters on Radio Caroline said about ‘time capsule tracks/songs’ to define an era, the same could be said about radio where you could have time capsule radio(s) to define and era in radio receivers.

Just a few rough examples off the top of my head…

1. Ekco AD65 - Philco 444 (People's Set)
2. Wartime Civilian Radio
3. Bush DAC90 - KB Toaster
4. PYE Fenman - Grundig 3028
5. Perdio PR7 - Pye P123BQ
6. Bush TR130 - Grundig Party Boy
7. Boom box – can't think of any models here - although there is the B&O System 10!

Terry

[Valvepower]

I'm intrigued by the cross-connections between domestic radio, domestic audio (hi-fi?) and PA equipment and the emergence of the guitar amplifier.

Originally Posted by Lucien Nunes

One of the core ideas of MEET is to bring together and cross-connect different electronic and electrical disciplines that traditionally have been kept separate as a results of de-facto existence of topic-specific museums.

Terry

[Lucien Nunes]

Yes, exactly this sort of thing that gets missed by existing museums. A radio museum shows you radios, a guitar museum shows you guitar amps but no-one shows the continuity between the two. And as for a public-address museum... well that's the one we've got covered so far. We've started in the middle I suppose.

[Radio Wrangler]

If you surveyed a hundred houses in the fifties, you would likely have come across the odd rogue set, something not mainstream consumersville. Someone in the fifties would be using a surplus set as a hobby. An HRO or maybe a PCR3. It was a lot more common then than now.

Oh, and a 'link' speaker and selector switch!

David

[BBCmicro]

I'm a bit of lurker on this forum as I don't have much technical expertise on radios, but I am a museums professional so feel the need to chip in and say: I am so impressed with the outlined philosophy and specific collecting policy that Lucien has broadly outlined in this thread, as well as the longue durée approach - 'contemporary collecting' - trying to predict what will be interesting or rare in centuries to come when you're surrounded by it in the present, or too close to assess its significance, is a dark art in museums. I would also be interested in hearing the vision/mission statement of the museum, if you have one!

What I would say is that it might be useful to consider what themes or stories you want to tell first, then fill in the models from those themes - likely using some of the models already mentioned. How did different people use different radios? In what situations? What social changes and signifiers did they mark? I think this has already been touched on, but a list of significant radios looks very different depending on what you're trying to say.

Social history through radios is a really interesting question - you might find some advice from the Social History Curators Group who run an active mailing list of UK curators and museums professionals, for whom telling stories through (sometimes obtuse or difficult collections) is their bread and butter!

Best of luck and keep us posted, I am genuinely fascinated.

Cheers.

[Lucien Nunes]

Thank you for the positive comments. This project has been bubbling under for a long time while we worked out just what seemed to be missing from current offerings. The trend has been downward for electrotechnical museums generally in the last decade so anything that can be done to address that seems to be good. But we want to do it in a way that adds something new, not just more of the same.

On the one hand you have the 'old boys' working away at keeping the spirit of the thing alive, without necesaarily building or fostering a permanent structure to endure after they retire from the scene. Then you have the museums working to preserve in perpetuity but focusing on static objects, paying little heed to the vibrant interactive environment that could be created with aid of these chaps while they are around to pass on their skills and knowledge.

So we are going into somewhat uncharted territory with this project, trying to find a happy medium that extracts the most from the genre to make it appealing and informative to the broadest audience. It might not work but we have to try it.