[NJARC] Infoage: Museum or Science Center?

[Dave Sica]

Long ago and far away (at an AWA Conference about ten years ago) a fellow
brought in a prewar RCA television, a rare TRK-5. Silly me, I asked him
if he was going to "get it working" and he looked at me with genuine
horror in his eyes and explained that this was a *completely original*
factory stock, unmolested-in-any-way set, likely the only totally
original TRK-5 in existence. To repair or even expertly restore it now
would, in his opinion, be a crime. I agreed with him. That was a crash
course for me in What Not To Do.
 
Most of what we collect is mass produced and reasonably plentiful,
Marconi and DeForest examples notwithstanding. Messing with them is
hardly a crime, in fact, for a lot of people, it's what they most enjoy
about the hobby. To the point that when Phil makes fantasy record players
out of plain jane models, or someone chrome plates a radio that was
originally painted plastic, or even just uses an "incorrect" varnish
finish, it's hardly a crime and few people even care. There are lots of
different opinions on the subject, but certainly anything between
splicing in orange drops to restuffing paper caps with repro'd labels
should be acceptable treatment for the vast majority of our "treasures",
even the better ones (for the next hundred years or so anyway, THEN even
an unmolested AA5 might very well be considered an artifact!) But genuine
historic artifacts, like that TRK-5 TV should be preserved rather than
monkeyed with.
 
The Washington Receiver certainly falls into the "historic artifact"
category right now, and I see no reason it needs to work. Want to demo
AGC? Lots of radios around can do that. But yes, working radios (and TVs
and phonographs) are "magic" - to us, and hopefully to our visitors if
we've done our job properly. It's the magic of a working radio that's
going to get people's blood going. That's also why the "hands on" section
of the museum is so important. 
 
Thanks, Alex for raising the topic, and Jim for stirring the pot!
 
--Dave

 
On Sat, 6 Sep 2008 13:32:34 -0700 (PDT) John Ruccolo <jr6v6gt at yahoo.com>
writes:
> Visit our web site - See http://www.njarc.org
> _______________________________________________
> Jim/Ray/Folks,
> 
> I think the Washington receiver is the only true one-of-a-kind, 
> "National treasure" item that the museum has. I think we should 
> leave it alone, if possible. I agree that if we can make it work 
> with the barest *minimum* of repairs, that's fine. But don't start 
> unsoldering and replacing components.
> 
> Virtually everything else in the museum was mass-produced. If, for 
> example, the AK 84 cathedral is all-original inside, then we should 
> definitely leave it alone. If not, we may as well repair the 
> electronics and demo it.
> 
> I am enjoying this discussion -- an excellent rainy-day topic for 
> the reflector. 
> 
> Of course, on a day like today, *any* topic is welcome. ;-)
> 






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