Today we’re going back to school on the Asheville campus of AB Tech Community College to visit a fascinating museum that tells us all about the history of radio.

Welcome to the Asheville Radio Museum. What began with around 20-30 radios has grown to a curated collection of dozens of pieces that span more than a century. This place has been around for over 2 decades, and is one of the best and most comprehensive museums in the country committed to telling the story of radio.

It’s a story that got its start in the late 1800’s when German scientist Heinrich Hertz discovered the existence of electromagnetic waves and the ability to send sound over long distances. It’s a technology that all started with a spark.

You see, the first “radio transmissions” sent signals of sparks that could be picked up by a receiver. You spend enough time just dealing with blips of noise and you figure out how to use those blips to communicate using the same “language” as the telegraph: Morse Code. And you don’t need wires.

Hence the term, “wireless.” Fast forward a couple decades and the big boom in radio erupts in the 1920’s thanks to these: vacuum tubes that allowed us to transmit voice and music.

Here at the museum there is an impressive collection of historical artifacts that tell the story of radio down through the decades of the 1900’s. And it’s largely a two-parter. There is the commercial broadcast radio side of things, with a multitude of impressive and expensive “luxury” pieces. And then, there’s the amateur side.

Radio is available to all. And not just for listening. Since its infancy the airwaves have been open to hobbyists as well as corporations.

Today, you can communicate with other licensed “hams” using your voice and a microphone with no data plan, no cell phone, and no towers. You can even talk to astronauts aboard the International Space Station, talk to other licensed hams through one of several satellites in space, or bounce signals off the moon and back to Earth!