Quote:
Originally Posted by Brach
Should not almost every type of museum throughout this country and the rest of the world have a large section with operational TV's, radios, etc.?
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Art museums typically have few if any 20th century household objects --the exception being those with a "modern design" section, and that is usually pretty limited.
Museums of science & industry often have a broad scope, both in terms of covering different time periods and the vast assortment of technologies. I would hardly expect them to have a big collection of TVs and radios, any more than I'd expect to see a big collection of telephones or vacuum cleaners.
There are a few specialized museums, such as the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting (
http://www.pavekmuseum.org/) and American Museum of Radio and Electricity (
http://www.amre.us/), which preserve a lot of radios and a few televisions.
And of course there is the Early Television Museum in Ohio (
http://www.earlytelevision.org/), with what must be the greatest vintage TV collection in the world.
I'm not so confident that the next decade will see a surge of interest in vintage TVs. Once analog TV broadcasts have disappeared in favor of digital, that will place an additional barrier in the way of the average person being able to use an old restored TV.
(No, I don't mean to start a discussion of digital vs. analog -- that topic has already been discussed to death in this forum and others.)
Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html