POWERGRAMS

1 HISTORY MUSEUM INCLUDES RARE CENTURY-OLD RADIOS, BOOKS By Gilbert Nicholson • Photos by Phil Free Being listed as a tourism destination alongside Ruby Falls is not only a badge of honor in the South but a coup for a little-known state organization. Such is the Alabama Historical Radio Museum, ranked in Good Housekeeping magazine's 2017 list of "50 Most Underrated Attractions in Every State." The museum is actually more of an exhibit, scattered throughout the atrium at Alabama Power Corporate Headquarters in Birmingham, featuring display cases of working antique radios dating to 1918. It's only fitting for Alabama Power to house the museum, since the company started WSY, the state's first licensed radio broadcasting station, originally created to communicate with line crews. Four display cases are on the opposite side of paintings of the company founders. One case includes a 1939 Scott Philharmonic Radio, which was a status symbol for movie stars and cost the same as a new Cadillac 80 years ago. The rest of the exhibit can be found following signs on atrium columns to the back side of the café dining area. One case features "modern" radios of the 1930s and '40s. Down a small flight of stairs, facing the big windows looking out on 18th Street, are three tall cabinets with WSY photographs; radios from the 1920s to the '50s, and a Superflex radio made in the north Birmingham community of Norwood by Radio Products Corp. But the "real" museum isn't accessible to the public. It's lovingly called "the shop," located across 18th Street at the corner of Rev. Abraham Woods Jr. Boulevard, in a former branch of First National Bank, which is home to the Alabama Historical Radio Society (alabamahistoricalradiosociety.org). It's a treasure trove of radio history. Rows of shelves are stocked with more than 800 vintage radios dating as far back as the early 1900s. First-generation television sets from the 1940s, with tiny 6-inch screens, are included in the museum. Crammed into a tall cabinet are hundreds of phonograph cylinders copyrighted by Thomas Edison, on which music was first recorded and played – long before vinyl LPs and 78 rpm records. A library with over 10,000 books and magazines about radio, TV and electronics includes one written by Heinrich Hertz, the 19th century German physicist who confirmed the theory that light and heat are electromagnetic waves (later called radio waves). Perhaps the most eye-catching display is the re-creation of the basement studio of the late Joe Rumore, a popular homespun morning radio host on WVOK-AM (the Mighty 690) whose Birmingham radio career spanned from the 1940s to the 1970s. The shop is humming two mornings a week when some of the 300 AHRS members drop by to disassemble, reassemble, repair and test antique radios at five fully-equipped work stations. Some members read. Some sort parts. Others do research. A lot of socializing and tall-tale-telling takes place. Monthly meetings are held, as are workshops on radio mechanics and electronics. "About half our membership are interested in tinkering with radios and technical aspects of how they're put together," said AHRS board member Dave Cisco. "The other half are interested in the old shows during the golden age of radio. "But we're looking for young people interested in radio A Scott Philharmonic Radio cost the same as a Cadillac in the 1940s.

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