Room 201

This gallery features radios that would have been found in American living rooms in the early 1920s when radio broadcasting was a new and exciting development. Visitors can listen to audio clips of what listeners would have heard on radios like the ones exhibited. Among the many artifacts are a Westinghouse Model RC, the first mass produced consumer radio, as well as early radios from companies like Zenith and Atwater Kent. Juvenile fiction books such as the “Radio Boys” and “Radio Girls” series are here, as well as both homemade and factory-built crystal radios. Docents explain how these early radios (that were rather expensive) required long outdoor antennas and special batteries to operate.