A special museum in Olen brings the history of radio to life
In the small town of Olen in Antwerp province, a remarkable museum is hidden behind a nondescript facade
Old timers on air
Nothing betrays what treasures are hidden behind the nondescript facade of the Radio Museum. But inside, room after room is filled with old radios, from the beginning of the 20th century to the late 1970s. Most of them are simply pieces of art, particularly the oldest ones, beautifully and thoughtfully made wooden constructions.
One of the first devices you see takes you directly to the early days of radio. It dates from 1901 and is in fact no more than a coil, an amplifier and headphones. Schyvaerts Leon, one of the people behind the museum, let me put on the headphones, and, to my surprise, I hear music.
However, there is no plug attached to this primitive radio. Leon explains that it works only on the energy of the radio waves. Even if the electric current gets cut in Olen, there will be radio playing in the museum.
Leon points to one of the less prominent radios in the collection. Radio number one, as he explains, the device that started it all. It is the first piece of the collection ever obtained and comes, as one might hope, with a story.
Radio number one
Radio number one dates back to just before the Second World War. When Nazi troops occupied Belgium, all Jews were required to hand over their radios. A Jewish family from Antwerp gave their device to the aunt of Pieter van Opstal, the founder of the museum. Many years later, he repaired the radio and began the collection.
In 1992, Van Opstal opened the Radio Museum, first in the garage of his home and later here in a house he bought and converted to the museum of today. His passion for radio infected others, and today a group of volunteers runs the museum and the related workshop. “You have to do something after you retire,” Leon so succinctly puts it.
One of the radios comes with an old black-and-white photo, taken somewhere in Aarschot in the 1920s. A family poses with a car and a “portable” radio, which is on display in the museum. A huge battery, lights, a circular antenna of about half a meter in diameter and a set of speakers. To carry such a radio, the whole family needed to help.
Next up is a wonderful Art Deco radio, decorated with images of a local church. This cannot be factory made. It is one of the radios that people used to construct themselves. It was cheaper, explains Leon, because the cost of buying a radio was astronomical until the 1930s. It was then that the so-called cigar box radios came on the market, small devices affordable to the middle class.
Another device is multimedia, even before the term was invented. A screen sits atop the 1948 radio, and a 16 mm projector is attached to the side. On the other side is a record player. It is one of only three such models left in the world.
Repair Service
The last room in the museum takes the visitor to the ’70s, where the collection stops. The transistor radios from that time are quite beautiful, but the grandeur of the old wooden devices with their smooth shapes is just a bit more impressive.
In the back of the museum, in a small building, it is considerably busier. A dozen men are busy tinkering with old machines. Serious concentration weighs in the air. The workbench is a chaos of bulbs, wires, tiny parts and electrical diagrams. The sound of a radio playing oldies fills the room, mingled with the creak and squeak of devices that are not quite yet fixed.
In the hall is a rack full of old appliances waiting for repairs. Leon says that in recent years there is renewed interest in getting old radios working again. Vintage is hip, a fact that here in Olen has not gone unnoticed.
People take the radio from their grandparents’ attic, for instance, and come along here to get it in working order. That doesn’t always works out, but often it does, says Leon. The museum has built up a large collection of radio bulbs and other components over the years. So for anyone who wants to hear what their old radio actually sounds like, you know where to go.
Photos by Toon Lambrechts
