||| FROM CAROL DAPOGNY for ORCAS ISLAND LIBRARY |||

Miss your morning joe with the regulars? Make a cup at home and join Norman Gilinsky at 8 a.m. on Friday, November 5 by Zoom meeting to hear about radio history and his vintage radio collection now on exhibit at the library (see below). Please bring questions!

Station KDKA in Pittsburgh’s November 2, 1920, broadcast of election returns and music is traditionally regarded as the start of commercial radio broadcasting in the U.S. Your library is commemorating the 101st anniversary of that moment by featuring a new exhibit.

Presented by Orcas Island resident, Norman Gilinsky, the exhibit includes ten radio receivers spanning the history of broadcast radio. The receivers are all restored to fully operational condition and include early battery-operated examples from the 1920’s, classic cathedral and table models from the 1930s and 1940s, an iconic Zenith Trans-Oceanic “Bomber” shortwave radio from the World War II era, and an early example of the new transistor technology that emerged in the 1950s.

By bringing news, live sports, politics, and live and recorded music to the masses, radio broadcasting played an enormous role in connecting 20th century America together.

While radio broadcasting goes back over 100 years, radio’s impact has only increased during that time. Not only do we all still enjoy AM, FM, and FM-stereo broadcast radio and their online simulcasts, we also experience radio in the form of cell phones, Wi-Fi, fixed wireless Internet, satellite TV, and more. Radio broadcasting has and will continue to evolve in the future, and the use of radio technology will only expand as the years go by.

The exhibit will run through November.

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