sowny.net | The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum


You are not logged in. Would you like to login or register?

June 8, 2025 8:05 am  #1


A Museum That Specializes In Early Radio & TV

We're lucky enough to have the MZTV Museum in Toronto and it's open for tours. 

But it doesn't concentrate on the tube's ancestor, radio. 

One place that does is located in the small town of Bowie, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. If you ever find yourself in the U.S. Capital (once the Orange Ogre is gone, perhaps) it's a place to consider. It's called the National Capital Radio & Television Museum but you won't find just vintage radios or TV sets there. 

There's also the odd artifacts they used to make sound effects on those old live radio shows, ads for receivers, and even strange devices people made to make their own receivers, including the one below fashioned out of a Quaker Oats box.

From P.C. Magazine:

"The most noticeable crystal radio on display looks like an empty cardboard Quaker Oats canister because it was built from one, with the tuning coil strung along the outside. A label explains that starting in 1921, Quaker sent out some 250,000 radio add-on kits to people who mailed in $1 and the label from a past Quaker purchase."

Why don't they have those kinds of promotions anymore?
 

Even if you never get there, some of the pics on their website are fun to look at. You can see a few here. 

This Little Museum Outside DC Offers a Deep Dive Into Retro Radio and TV Tech