What's New?
1920s radio manufacturing in Asheville! This model HS-2 beauty was made by the Hi-Grade Wireless Instrument Company and is one of only two still known to exist. It was restored and donated by Robert Lozier, one of the American Wireless Association's most knowledgeable restoration experts. The museum is most proud and grateful for this remarkable donation. To learn more about this radio and the company that made it, click here.
Imagine your family gathered around watching TV on a screen only 7 inches in size! In 1949, TV was a new marvel, even though the pictures were in black & white and very grainy. You can watch for yourself on this working Tele-Tone television set.
A radio that costs more than a brand new car??? Yes! In 1935, Zenith released this beautiful 25 tube console radio named the Stratosphere. When the country was just coming out of the 1930s depression, this radio sold for $750 - about $15,000 in 2022. It was something only the wealthy could afford, and only 350 were ever purchased then. Today there are only about 50 still in existence. It is the most highly prized antique radio for many collectors. The museum is most grateful to the family of radio collector Steve Melvin for making this radio part of our collection where the public can see and enjoy it.
Another highly prized receiver from radio's golden age, this Allwave Deluxe 12 by the E H Scott Company features an all chrome chassis that could be installed in the buyer's choice of many attractive cabinet styles. This 12 tube radio is the company's first all chrome model. E. H. Scott made a good many 30 tube Phantom receivers... And there were up to 10 Scott Quarantas In configurations from 40 to 52 tubes!
It looks like a science experiment, but it is actually a working radio! Sold in the mid 1920s by the Atwater Kent Company, it is called a "breadboard" radio because it was built on the type of board found in kitchens of the day for slicing bread. You can hear it play at the Asheville Radio Museum!
This 1930s Zenith radio is nicknamed the Walton radio because of its appearance in a popular 1970s TV show named The Waltons. Beautiful in its design, it features the famous large Zenith black tuning dial, along with a so-called "magic eye" tube to tuning in stations. It also has the famous Zenith "shutter dial" radio dial which mechanically changes the dial face being shown as the user changes from one radio band to another.
It is not a radio, but it IS an amazing music machine called a jukebox from the mid 1940s! At a nickle per song, it provided great entertainment for dancing as the country celebrated the end of World War II and the return of a more normal life.
This machine was originally installed in the community center of a small lumber town in the 1940s. When the lumber company shut down, one of the workers purchased it for $25! It traveled with its new owner across the country to Florida, who eventually moved to Asheville. We are most grateful that her family and she decided to share it with the public through their donation to the museum. Currently undergoing restoration by the museum staff, it should be available for viewing in the late fall of 2022.
A radio that tells its story! Donated by Robert Randolph of Swannanoa, you can press a button and hear, in his own words, how important this 1930s radio was when his parent were first married and later uses its shortwave band to listen to the chimes of the Big Ben clock in England and the ravings of Adolph Hitler in Germany.
Attention radio technology geeks! This is a mid 1920s Acmeflex reflex radio. This circuity was invented in France and enabled the same two tubes to amplify both the radio frequency and audio frequency signals, thereby saving the expense of using four tubes for this purpose. This design was only used briefly and was abandoned once vacuum tubes became less expensive.
