Radio Museum

The villages are full of mysteries and gems. Bicycling to my advisor's vacation house in the country, Bree and I found ourselves for a moment in the central square of Bloomfield, NY (population 3,000) where we saw a sign indicating "RADIO MUSEUM." And where it pointed we found the Communications Museum of the Antique Wireless Association, the latter having 4,000 members world-wide.

We returned the next day. From May through September the museum is open Sundays from 2pm to 5pm. We arrived at 1:58 and found the museum's sandwich sign already out. "OPEN," it proclaimed, "(free admission)". And the doorway was open. In the doorway there is a display of telegraph keys, and then we hike up some steep stairs. The museum is bursting with old radio equipment, all painstakingly restored and elegantly displayed. We were greeted by two docents. "What should I look at first?" I asked, enthusiastically, and my query lead to personal tour that lasted more than an hour and a half.

They have pretty much everything. It is all lovingly kept, and they will be very pleased to explain it to you. They have the first cellphone. They have a 500 Watt rotary spark-gap transmitter, and yes they will fire it up for you. They have part of Armstrong's first FM transmitter. They have complete reproductions of three different kinds of telegraph operators' booths. They have an assortment of telegraph keys, and yes, you can try them out. They have an in-house AM radio station that (re)broadcasts period radio, which you can then tune to on any of many vintage sets. You hear how radio really sounded then. They have tubes galore. They have even an assortment of mechanically scanned televisions, which I didn't even know existed.

Recommended.