STC 543 Restoration
Remember when the humble wireless used to be a significant piece of furniture?? There was no such thing as a television, and the family used to sit gathered around the radio listening to radio shows - and there were some famous ones we still talk of today - the infamous 1938 broadcast of alien invaders, Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, or later all through the 1950's Eccles, Count Moriaty, Bluebottle (the Goons) graced (??!!?!) the airwaves across Australia, Europe and most of the world.
I must confess that all of these things were before my time - but I must also confess to listing to original recordings of these shows through my old AM radios. I have a great little AM transmitter - The Spitfire - which I use to transmit the recordings through my house and listen to them on my old valve radios.
Here are a few pictures of one such radio I have awaiting restoration.
I'm not entirely sure of the exact date just yet - but I've narrowed it down to either 1939 or 1940. Just after the Orson Welles broadcast.
I like to think that this radio might have played that famous Orson Wells show all those years ago - I imagine the thoughts of the listeners, gathererd around listening to what they believed was the invasion of the Earth by Martians.
Perhaps even at 11:15am on September 3, 1939, it even sounded the words of Neville Chamberlain when he announced, "I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany."
Radio really has sounded some of the most historical moments in the history of the world.
Lets hope I can restore this one to it's former glory.
