Bellingham Antique Radio Museum

he Bellingham Antique Radio Museum is a private collection gathered over the past 25 years by Jonathan Winter. Jonathan has had a life-long love affair with Radio and remembers exploring the workings of discarded radio sets when he was 5 or 6 years old. The collection is a historical journey through time; from the beginning of radio to the early 1940's. There are over one thousand radios to view, and in some cases to play.

The Bellingham Antique Radio Museum is located in downtown Bellingham, Washington, USA at 1315 Railroad Ave. and is open to the public Wednesday thru Saturday from 11:AM to 4:PM. Visitors are welcome and there is no charge, though donations and comments are gratefully accepted. The pieces in the museum are not for sale. Occasionally items are traded with other museums or collectors in order to broaden or otherwise increase the scope of the collection. The museum exists so new generations may see and explore a world of technology which is no longer here, and to give perspective to our present technology. Schools are especially welcome to make field trips, and help is always available to students working on projects which may require the museum's resources. If you have any items which you feel might be of interest to the Museum, please give us a call at 360-671-4663, or just come by Wednesday thru Saturday from 12:00 to 4:00.

The museum makes use of the World Wide Web and Internet to combine the old and the new in ways which allow students, collectors, or anyone interested in the history of Radio, to visit and explore the Museum. The goal is to provide information on the history of radio, and photos with discriptions of many early radios. Many of the pictures will be of the more unusual radios of the past. We will also have sound bites of early significant radio broadcasts, and the occasional short film clip if useful. The project will have to be a work-in-progress, as the volume of information to be included will continue to grow over time. We welcome submissions from the net, and will provide space for these submissions. The name of the game is information... and more information about radio and the history of broadcasting.

The new year of 1999 sees the Bellingham Antique Radio Museum moving into its 11th year of operation. From a small room on the second floor of the Marketplace Building in Fairhaven in 1990, to our present location on Railroad Ave. in downtown Bellingham in 1996, this year the Museum hopes to find a permanent home and is asking interested parties to help make the Museum a major local resource for the community. Over the past years I have supported the Museum with little in the way of financial help from other sources, and though I intend to continue my support, I am now asking for your help. The Museum recently applied for Non-Profit Status, and shortly, any donations to the Museum will be deductable.

Think about it for a moment. Most of what is on display at the museum is less than 90 years old.... one good long lifetime.... and yet most of the items on display at the Museum are gone from our lives. Our children have little in the way of example to stimulate an interest in science, math and physics and our schools have little in the way of reference material about radio and rarely have examples for students to examine. Even our University has little in the way of early radio history. It is the goal of this Museum to provide this resource for Students, collectors and the general public.