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Posted on 02/12/2006 5:42:12 PM PST by Denver Ditdat
Growing up during the Depression, Ray Bintliff still remembers listening to the adventures of The Shadow and Little Orphan Annie on his parents’ Philco console radio. The 83-year-old Acton resident comes from a generation of Americans who heard history coming into their living rooms.
On radios made by Zenith, RCA and Sparton, they heard Orson Welles announce a Martian invasion and FDR pronounce a "Day of Infamy." They heard about the D-Day invasion at Normandy and the antics of Fibber McGee and Molly.
Many, like Thomas Romano of Grafton and John V. Terrey of Carlisle, followed a boyhood passion for radios around the country and world into careers that still keep them tuned in. The son of a Worcester radio repairman, Romano joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps and used his technical expertise in the Korean War. Growing up in rural Alice, Texas, Terrey operated a ham radio as a teenager before devoting himself to cutting-edge research with Raytheon Company.
The radios that informed and entertained Americans throughout the 20th century will be on display and sale next Sunday in Westford at the largest indoor antique radio flea market on the East Coast.
Radio XXXVII takes place Feb. 19 at the Westford Regency Inn Market from 8 a.m. till noon. Romano called the flea market "an amazing chance to see old radios." He should know. The 72-year-old Millbury resident owns Tom’s Antique Radio in his home town. "It’s really intriguing. You always see something different there. Every radio is different. Believe me, I’ve seen them all. And even today, it’s amazing to discover what they have there," Romano said.
Terrey estimates more than 60 exhibitors will be showing and selling old radios, parts and related goods from about 90 tables in the 7,900-square-foot hall. Based on last year’s event, he expects more than 800 people will be on hand to share their interest in radio technology and culture. "Visitors will really get a view of what radios were like in the early days," Terrey said. "It’s kind of like going to a museum. Visitors will meet radio people who really like to share their interests."
The show is sponsored by the Greater Boston Antique Radio Collectors.
Terrey, who has owned and published Antique Radio Classified for 20 years, said hundreds of vintage radios from the 1920s to 1960s will be on sale along with hard-to-find parts, early transistor radios and televisions, books, magazines and related items. He believes the flea market is the largest, oldest continually running event of its kind in the region.
Terrey’s extensive personal collection contains an estimated 1,000 radios and related items, mostly from before 1925, including parts from a 1908 Marconi radio. It includes shelves of radios that ran on vacuum tubes and clusters of horn-shaped speakers, transistor radios, antennas and novelty items like radio-shaped banks and playing cards. Terrey uses to his technical expertise to restore his old radios, most of which still receive AM stations throughout the region. He pointed out bookshelves stacked with volumes of "Radio Boys" and "Radio Girls" adventures tales from the 1920s and Tom Swift and Bobbsey Twins stories about radios. "I’ve been interested in electronics and radios since I was 13," Terrey said on a gray blustery morning.
Born around the time his parents were listening to Franklin Roosevelt’s "Fireside Chats" on the family radio, Terrey was a teenage "ham" operator before going to MIT in 1958 to study electrical engineering.
Terrey said Greater Boston Antique Radio Collectors is a loosely affiliated group of people bound by a shared interest. "It’s not a club. It’s just a great group of folks," he said.
When they get together, they often reminisce about old American radio manufacturers like Air Castle, American Bosch made in Springfield and Audiola. People who like old radios, Terrey said, fall into two broad categories. "Some like me are more into the technology and history," he said. "There’s others who are more interested in the old programs and personalities like Jack Benny and Milton Berle."
Romano falls into the first category. He learned to repair radios in his father’s Worcester shop in the 1940s, fueling a lifetime infatuation. He remembers listening to radio broadcasts of Warren Spahn pitching for the Boston Braves. After the Army, he attended the now-defunct Massachusetts Radio School in Boston and earned his living repairing radios, televisions and just about anything electrical. Now semi-retired, he’s collected more than 200 old radios over the last two decades and specializes in repairing old television sets. In an age dominated by digital technology and iPods, Romano described himself as "tube-type knowledgeable."
" I don’t think they teach that today. It’s all ’plug in, plug out.’ Everything’s expendable. In my era, we’d troubleshoot every component," said Romano.
An 83-year-old retired electrical engineer from Acton, Bintliff "can’t remember when I first got hooked on radios." He began repairing radios in high school and served as an aviation electronics technician during World War II. For years, he worked for RCA designing televisions, later becoming "a modest collector" after retirement. Bintliff said visitors to the flea market will see different styles of radios found in homes throughout the 20th century including the curved "cathedral" and square tombstone models. There will be consoles that sat on the floor and "mantle" radios, a style that fit onto fireplaces and shelves. He spends his spare time scouring antique shops and flea markets for rare electronic components, vacuum tubes and hard-to-find buttons, knobs and dials from radios built more than 50 years ago.
Some especially rare models, he said, like the plastic Catalin radio popular in the 1930s, have fetched $5,000 on the market. "You never know what you’re going to find in someone’s barn or attic," Bintliff said. "I think everybody has an interest in old things. The reward is taking an old radio and getting it to play again."
At the flea market, Joe Smolski of Framingham will be looking for old time radios like the 1941 Zenith console on which he first heard Polish polkas and later WMEX DJ Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsberg hype Adventure Car Hop in Saugus. His fascination in communication technology took root when he worked as a "bench man" repairing radios for an RCA dealership in the 1960s. He later studied electrical engineering at Wentworth College and worked in research and development for area technology companies.
Now 57, Smolski estimated he owns more than 100 old radios. His primary interest lies in keeping them running. "Many of these old radios used to be the central entertainment device in peoples’ homes. It may seem odd to think of it but before the advent of television, people used to sit around them and sort of watch their radios," he said. Smolski still has his grandmother’s 1941 Zenith which still receives stations from London and Moscow on its shortwave bands. Like other old radio buffs, he laments the anonymity and "disposability" of current communications technology. "Today almost all consumer electronics are unserviceable, even by their makers. In the old days, radios were made to be serviced," he said.
In simpler times, Smolski said people were drawn to the signature designs of popular radios such as "Zenith’s big black dial." "I doubt if people today feel as emotionally attached to their iPods," he said. "If somebody remembers those old classic radios, the (radio) flea market can be a trip back in time."
MORE DETAILS: Registration for Radio XXXVII begins at 7:30 a.m. It costs $30 to reserve a table.
For further information about Antique Radio Classified, call Pat Wedge at 866-371-0512; write her at P.O. Box 2, Carlisle, MA 01741; or e-mail her at arc@antique.radio.
To contact Thomas Romano at Tom’s Antique Radio, visit the shop at 8 Howe Lane, Millbury, or call 508-865-6293.
Ham Radio Ping ListPlease Freepmail me if you want to be added to or deleted from the list.
L
I still have my Hallicrafters SX-122. :-)
I would love to check out this auction. If I bought any more old radios, I would have to build a bigger house. I restore and collect old Hallicrafters receivers, WWII and earlier.
I fooled around with radio and radio repair when I was growing up (b: 1954) and enjoyed it quite a bit. I especially enjoyed the "Sherlock Holmes" aspect of researching electronic faults that stumped me. I also accumulated many dozens of old radios and TVs (found in the trash) that I had either repaired or given up on; all of which formed a large wall in my folk's basement back in NJ. Yes, I had a "radiowall" LOL. Plus boxes and boxes of tubes and parts. I have to confess a soft spot for those old radios and the way they look, but to accumulate them now seems totally absurd, other than a rambling hankering for "the way things used to be". "Enjoy at a distance."
It's sad that they don't make them like they used to. Cheapness has taken the place of quality construction and good RF engineering.
Sounds like a great show. When I get a job and a place with a family room, I want to fill it with old radios. It would be great to listen to classic radio (see http://www.radiospirits.com) on an old wooden radio like my grandmother had.
For those who like radio entertainment, BBC 7 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/) offers dramas, sci fi, comedy and children's shows. I enjoy listening to Sherlock Holmes or radio versions of the Outer Limits over the computer. It's too bad that, as far as I know, American radio no longer puts out this type of entertainment.
Thanks for the post.
After reading I went up to the attic and pulled out an old Zenith Trans Oceanic probly 1952
Plugged it in to see if it still works, it does
I have tons and tons of 50's and 60's stuff up there.
Collins KWM, a Gates 1000W Broadcast transmitter, at least 5 Hallicrafters receivers, thousands of tubes most in their original boxes.
A friend asked me why do I collect and hang on to this?
Answer:
It might be worth something someday.
Used to have a neighbor who was *really* into collecting Art Deco-style radios. He had a TON of 'em.
Sitting here next to this computer is a:
Pro-2006 scanner
Heathkit Packkit 232
Kenwood TS-520
Kenwood TS-820
RS 10 meter tranciever
ICOM IC-2AT
Shure Model 444 Mic
(And a Midland CB) :-)
When I was five years old we had an RCA consol radio.
I used to spend afternoons listening to Hank Williams, Hank Snow and Elvis. I had to stand on tip toes to turn it on and dial in stations. If was one of the first radios with a cathode ray tube to dial in the tuning.
That machine was magic to five year old kid in 1957.
Several had a "magic eye" that was a tube whose top was visible on the front of the set above the tuning dial. As you approached a station it would close its "eye" to let you know when you'd reached the best reception possible.
As a young boy I learned how to take the tubes out and test them on a tube tester my Dad had and how to read the schematics from Howard W. Sams. And we'd order parts from Allied, Burstein-Applebee, and Lafayette.
I used to go to sleep at night listening to a crystal radio I'd built - with unbelievably heavy headphones.
Part of the lore was knowing not only the station call letters but that many had meanings -
WLS, Chicago, Illinois - Sears Roebuck (World's largest store)
WOWO, Fort Wayne, Indiana - Westinghouse (Think of a W with a circle around it)
WPTF, Raleigh, North Carolina - Durham Life (We protect the family)
Even Asheville, North Carolina, (the Land of the Sky) where I grew up, had a few stations that reflected the region - WWNC (wonderful western North Carolina), WLOS (wonderful land of sky), and WSKY (wonderful sky).
It was amazing that from Asheville I could hear as far away as KDKA Pittsburgh and WWL New Orleans on a radio powered only by a germanium diode!
I would not want to be the one who has to get a Gates 1000W transmitter out of an attic! Even worse would be putting it up there.
LOL
It was rough.
Took two big healthy sons and a couple of neighbors to get the monster up there.
It's been there for well over 20 years now.
I found it in it's original box with a model 4F speaker, both covered in pigeon poop, in a garage attic. The restoration took 2 years.
I just wish I had kept all of them, the best (the most rare) was a Spiltdorf model 3Z with hand wound spider coils.
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