{"id":1886,"date":"2017-01-01T12:37:07","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T15:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2017-01-19T23:57:32","modified_gmt":"2017-01-20T02:57:32","slug":"interesting-radio-designs-at-the-hammond-radio-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/?p=1886","title":{"rendered":"The Hammond Radio Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

I find that I’m increasingly interested in both the appearance and function of radios, and how these two aspects interact.<\/p>\n

Two summers ago, when visiting Guelph, where Dorothea and I\u00a0were born and (for the most part) grew up, I visited the Hammond Museum of Radio<\/a>. You can read a\u00a0report of my visit in the Halifax Amateur Radio Club newsletter from October 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The radios (and a handful of televisions) at the museum span the history of radio up to around the 1980’s. What struck me was the extraordinary effort some manufacturers made in cabinetry design. Hallicrafters<\/a>, a manufacturer of communications receivers\u2014not exactly a priority consumer item\u2014went to great lengths to design functional but desirable rigs. I didn’t know this at the time of my museum visit, but the company\u00a0hired designer Raymond Loewy in the late 1940’s to design the S-40A, which is one of only two Loewy designs that\u00a0has found its way into the MOMA<\/a>. Loewy’s work raised the aesthetic bar for other radio makers such as Zenith and Electrohome<\/a>.<\/p>\n