About Quizzes

Radio and Television Museum

The Radio and Television Museum exists in a fully restored early-20th-century building, located on a corner lot in the City of Bowie, Maryland, just off Route 50 and the Beltway, near Washington, D.C. The museum exists to educate the public about the history and impact of radio and television technology, and the broadcasting industry. It features inventions that led to The Information Age, which blossomed in the mid-1970s. The Radio and Television Museum was the brainchild of the Mid-Atlantic Antique Radio Club, which, during the early 1990s, concluded that there was a need for such a museum in the Washington/Baltimore area. That led to the formation of a committee and the incorporation of The Radio History Society in 1993. The purpose of creating and maintaining a museum was to preserve radio and television artifacts and educate the public on the important role of radio/TV technology and broadcasting. That goal came into reality in 1999, when the doors of the Radio and Television Museum were opened to the public. The museum is housed in a historic 1905 farmhouse owned by the City of Bowie, and is governed by the Radio History Society. It is home to large quantities of old literature and radio artifacts with hundreds of items related to the history of radio and television broadcasting. The museum's permanent collections include radios, television sets, microphones, memorabilia, books, magazines, and broadcasting ephemera. Visitors can view such rare artifacts as a de Forest Audion tube, a Marconi spark transmitter similar to the one used on the Titanic, crystal sets of the 1920s, magnificent floor model radios of the 1930s, plastic sets of the 1950s, early transistor radios, and typical television sets of the 1940s and 1950s. In addition to the primary exhibit, rotating exhibits are introduced every few months. A large and growing research library in the museum houses early radio materials, textbooks, recordings, and journals. It also holds bound volumes of such rare radio magazines as All-Wave Radio from the 1930s. The Radio and Television Museum conducts various audio and video programs as well as entertainment events throughout the year.