| We have seen with our own eyes the eclipse of the whole epoch - the epoch of the Soviet Union. And somehow imperceptibly the things of our common surrounding became pieces of antique. It seems quite recently thatwe tried persistantly to get rid of bulky valve radio receivers and buy light and portable "transistors" instead. Generations change in technology but even now who of the people over 35 does not feel nostalgic of the scale and the "green eye" of an old radio gleaming in the darkness... |
| I have a feeling I was
interested in old radios through all my life.May be
it is genetic memory? My grandfather, a journalist by
education, took a great interest in radio
broadcasting in 1930's. He was also an active
listener.I remember him sitting at the radio set
trying to tune in some DX station through the mess of
statics. It was my grandad who gave me my first radio
set as a present in early 70's. It was a big and
heavy multy-band set in a wooden cabinet model "October". Frankly, I was only 7 then
and it did not become the first piece of my
collection - after some time it was lost. My present
collection is about 3 years old.A receiver of the
same model as my very first one is most precious to
me. Besides some radios made in this country in
1930-50's I also have some R-sets produced by Phillips,
Mende, Tefag , RCA. A radio of direct amplification "EKL-34" made in Leningrad in 1934 is
the oldest of them all. Unfortunately it does not
work now because of wasting of the materials, of
which resistors and caps are made. In case of need I
reconstruct my radios carefully. Fortunately, we can
still find here old spare parts and materials to use
them for restoring. Working with my collection brings
me a kind of energy.Every R-set was some time "a
favourite of the family" and the spirit of old
times hides under every chassis and revives in the
soft radiation of the tubes. The idea of making a homepage reflecting my collection has come to me in the summer of 1998. And since then the volume of information on the site has been increasing and the design of the pages has changed not once (for the better, I presume). For over a year I have attained a kind of an "intermediate finish": now on the pages those interested can find not only the photos but also the diagrams and technical data of all the radios included in the site. In the halls of the virtual gallery the music of those half-forgotten years can now be listened to. "The Tube Souls" forum is open on the site that (I hope) will become a place of contacts between valve radio fans and collectors. Marking the virtual museum with a special award of the biggest Russian site on museums www.museum.ru was a pleasant result. During 1998 my collection was enlarged by some rare exhibits owing to information in the World Wide Web. But the contents of the site have gone beyond the limits of the exhibition. The growing interest of Russian and foreign visitors of the virtual gallery for the history of this country's radio industry, the attention of the press have confirmed my intension to convert the site into a complete database on all the models of tube home radios produced in this country which include not only the technical characteristics but also a description of the exhibits, so to say, from the first hands. The volume of material piled up during the work on the collection makes this project quite realistic. In conclusion the author calls for the visitors of the virtual museum to express their opinions and remarks. Welcoming every criticism, I hope that the intercourse with the visitors will enable me to upkeep my virtual gallery as a constantly attractive resource in the Russian section of the Web. |
Yours sincerely,
Vitaly Brousnikin, vitalybr()onego.ru
