Just recently, I made a weekend trip to Asheville for a medical convention. Had to have a little bit of a break and decided to go to the Asheville Radio Museum. Being an amateur radio guy, it’s a must. So I put it into Google maps and it took me 10 miles out of town. There is a fire station called “A B Technical college” but it took me to the wrong place. Finally figured out that Google and sent me on a wild goose chase and drove back to the downtown where the A.B. technical college is located. The museum is on campus and usually there are signs to get there. Arriving a little bit late, I met Lee who was so kind to stay open a little bit longer past closing time. Usually they’re open on the Saturday between 1 to 3 o’clock. Lee promptly showed me the highlights of the collection. The museum is a small room in the college run by amateur radio enthusiasts that have refurbished these radios so that they work. They look brand new, all polished and fixed up as they came out of the factories.
We started with a working mechanical “Victrola Record player”, no electronics at all. Crank it up and it had amazing fidelity for a 1920’s mechanical device.
We looked at the “Atwater Kent” radios of that era. Interesting that the active elements were mounted on the top of the board while the wires were under the board. My great grandfather worked at the Atwater Kent radio factory near Davenport, IA. When he got his Model T Ford, he mounted one of the radios into the car. He told the foreman about it and the forman brought Mr Atwater over to see it. Mr Atwater stated that this would never take off as it was too dangerous to drive and tune the radio. In the great depression that followed, Mr Atwater closed the factory and lost his money in the crash. At that time Motorola got it’s start with car radios! Too bad that he did not see the opportunity staring him in the face.
Other items included a “Gibson Girl” with was a 500kHz CW device that was hand cranked to be operated in a lifeboat for search and rescue purposes. A dear friend of mine (K4KBB – SK) gave me his Gibson Girl years ago as he was cleaning out his storage unit. He carried it on his boat just in case he needed it. Since then the technology has change. In 1976 a friend of my father’s was a NASA engineer and a sailor. He helped design the weather satellites and knew their capability. He designed a 2M tone control system to send codes from his boat to the passing satellites. The satellites would record the information and relay it to Goddard space center in Greenbelt, MD where his son was decoding the data. The doppler shift of the signal was used to calculate where the transmitter was located on earth. This was the first satellite based search and rescue experiment that showed the utility of this idea. Since then search and rescue has transitioned to satellite based systems and ultimately GPS based. Mr Jim Baker wanted to move his sailboat to the Bahamas to test it but his plans fell though. My father invited him along on our yearly Christmas Sail to the Bahamas and we were the first to run the tests. This was published in multiple magazines at the time in 1976. He also used a golf umbrella stripped of the cloth but then wired up with copper wire as a parabolic reflector and managed to make the longest single satellite bounce communication. It went from the Bahamas, up to the geosynchronous satellite (22K miles away) to Kashima ground station outside Tokyo Japan with a 5 watt HT. I was floored as Mr Baker could speak fluent Japanese!
Many other radios were present that had varied histories like the “Folks Emphanger” from Nazi Germany in WW2 (The Peoples’ Receiver). This was commissioned by Goebbels to be able to send propaganda to the German people for the purpose of controlling them. It could not tune foreign broadcasts like signals from the BBC and VOA that would have a different view of the news. If the radio was tampered to allow this, the owners were beaten or killed. Now our politicians use the internet and purchase time on news outlets to do the same! Thank heavens that they do not beat us if we choose to change the channel or have different opinions. A testimonial to the value of freedom. The Voice Of America was started in World War 2 to send out truthful news stories to fight Hitler’s propaganda. It is still very valuable organization that is committed to telling the truth to the world as outlined in their charter. (See VOA project here)
There are too many radios that they have worked on and refurbished to list here. My thanks to Lee for keeping the museum open for me past closing time and being an exemplary host showing the radios and how they work. If in Asheville, stop by the museum between 1-3 PM on a Saturday and take in the sights and sounds. As an amateur radio enthusiast, you will not be dissapointed. (Thanks Scott for making me aware of this gem.) 73 Peter.
Brightleaf Amateur Radio Club 