The California Historical Radio Society ("CHRS') is a non-profit organization centered on the history of radio and radio broadcasting, including related technologies such as vintage TV, amateur radio and HiFi. CHRS focuses on telling the story of radio through the decades to all age groups in the most interesting manner. Many of its members have gathered every Saturday in a historic building in Alameda, California of 7000 square feet on two levels, for a day of volunteering and socializing and where visitors are most welcome, which social and working get-togethers are expected to resume soon in 2021.
CHRS is a complex of educational activities about the history of radio including the museum (a work in progress). The focus is on the history of early radio and early radio broadcasting in California, especially the San Francisco Bay Area and the western states. Its museum and headquarters, known as "Radio Central," are located on its new site in Alameda, California.
Norman Berge, Jim Cirner, Attorney Gene Rippen and several others founded the California Historical Radio Society as a non-profit corporation in 1974 and qualified it as an IRC 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. CHRS absorbed the web-only "Bay Area Radio Museum" founded by David F. Jackson in 2003 in Berkeley, California. CHRS then absorbed the Society of Wireless Pioneers (then managed by Waldo Boyd) by merger in 2012 and took custody of its archives and re-established its website, on which it publishes archival materials and commentary. CHRS earlier took custody of the James Maxwell radio archives and library, and succeeded to his amateur radio callsign, W6CF for its amateur radio operations. In 2014, CHRS moved to Alameda. from its earlier temporary home at the historic Berkeley radio station KRE.
The CHRS annually hosts its "Radio Day by the Bay" fundraiser each summer where old-time radio shows are performed, A large annual auction of radios and radio related electronics has been available to attendees accompanied by live music. Steve Kushman has been the producer for many years.
Each fall CHRS inducts notable local broadcasters into its Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame. CHRS continues to host the Bay Area Radio Museum, an online collection of airchecks.
On its primary websites, CHRS publishes texts, video and audio about radio history, radio restorations and news of its current activities including amateur radio. The Society of Wireless Pioneers (SoWP) covers the men (and some women) of early wireless telegraphy especially sea-going radio operators as well as their many evolving technologies. CHRS Deputy Archivist, historian and Fellow Bob Ryzdewski manages this website and the SoWP archives. The Bay Area Radio Museum and Hall of Fame, for which David Jackson was initially responsible, primarily honors radio industry people and archives broadcasts. Len Shapiro helps to manage this site.
The CHRS Journal (edited by Richard Watts) is widely admired in radio history circles and played a part in the recognition of CHRS by the Antique Wireless Association (AWA) in New York, which has bestowed its annual Houck Award (2015) and its Taylor Television Award (2020) on CHRS. AWA has also bestowed the Houck Award on two CHRS historians Mike Adams (1995) and Bart Lee (2003), bestowed the (inaugural) Murray Award for the best article in the AWA Review on Bart Lee (2018) and in 2020 made Adams and Lee (inaugural) AWA Fellows. “The AWA Houck Award for Documentation recognizes quality original research and writing on the history or evolution of electronic communication technology”; “The Robert Murray Award is awarded in honor of Robert Murray, AWA Review Editor Emeritus, for excellence in writing in the AWA Review”; “The AWA Taylor Award is given in memory of John P. Taylor, TV developer at RCA and editor of the RCA Broadcast News, for documentation or preservation of the history of television technology.”
CHRS maintains a Facebook page, managed by Len Shapiro, for current announcements and historical vignettes.
Current activities in the museum include an evolving television history display managed by physicist Dr. John W. Staples, W6BM, (with the help of television engineer Gilles Vrignaud) operates one of the few surviving mechanical television sets (the "Visionette," from 1929, restored by John Staples, John Stuart and Philip Monego). The W6CF amateur radio station operates both modern and vintage ham radio gear in its own "radio shack," managed by Denny Monticelli, AE6C, a National Semiconductor Fellow. A large electronics shop is managed by Scott Robinson, a Dolby audio engineer. The archives and library are managed by a staff, especially CHRS Fellows in Preservation David Harris and Hil Hampton, supervised by Archivist Bart Lee, a retired lawyer. CHRS, by its dedicated corps of volunteers, is presently (2021) completing the new Radio Hall of Fame center and a replica but wo reference
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