About Radiomuseum

Indeed, there are thousands collector´s home pages and many forums, but many of these have a big disadvantage: searching for and getting detailed information becomes more and more complicated and frustrating and cannot be performed easily and in reasonable time.

What is the aim of this site?

A reference work as a book - even in looseleaf sheets - can never be up to date.
We learn about new facts nearly every day which cannot be added to a book. Someone who begins collecting radios will search the Internet for information these days - and will find too many places, often not with the information wanted ... Each bringing only a tiny fraction of information about this big field of antique radios etc.

This site is a common virtual museum and a «most complete reference work for radios», not only a picture gallery or schematic source. But we are still far from complete or correct with all data.

Further expansion depends on other collectors who are willing to upload additional models and to correct wrong information.

This portal enables collectors to look for specific collector's prices, detailed information and advertisements regarding a specific model. Of interest for collectors is the ability to present their own collection or tube collection. About 2700 active members have already done this by uploading pictures (of their models).

The forum (and "Papers") also have been well received and we see that guests and members access these articles between 6000 and 12.000 times a day. In "Papers" we expect exceptionally good articles either from club periodicals or other sources as well as yet unpublished ones.

Easily found by Google

You´ll find that articles or collections of our members have top ranking on Google. That is the main advantage to a private web page. Examples: Type Edith Mills in Google (yielding mostly 1st of >2 million) or try Konrad Birkner.

Membership

To prevent inappropriate pictures and activities from spreading over the site, only registered members can upload pictures and administrators have to accept before being visible.
RMorg now shows 2 749 543 pictures (including 1 051 154 schematics), 280 830 collector prices and 347 375 model pages, 71 000 of them for the USA. Members can click on to view in large size. Every interested collector is invited to join the activities and to become a co-worker instead of remaining a free-rider. The slightest amount of help is most welcome - even if it is only a comment on a model. To secure responsibility (for forum and data etc.) we identify collectors by their real name.

Who would not be grateful for a good piece of advice from an experienced collector? Collecting is a dead-end without mutual exchange of information. Here you can upload your comments or questions directly on the model - here you can find people who are willing to answer your question. Have you ever been frustrated not finding a certain, interesting article in an old periodical? We want to preserve and publish such articles. This can only be achieved when people from all over the world cooperate. We are now 17 664 members from 90 nations. Support for the organization comes from the «Foundation Radiomuseum Lucerne» which was founded and is being financed by myself to make sure that the organization continues after my passing away. Here is some more insurance for continuity - and this is the second part. I am looking for «Officers» who would like to be in charge of certain administrative tasks - e.g. checking and activating picture or text contributions by members. This work would be in an volunteer capacity.

There is much work to be done until the final goal is achieved. Let's do it. Looking forward to your participation.

Lucerne, Switzerland, 22nd January 2004, Ernst Erb (HB9RXQ, EA8BGN) Last review Dec. 2011.

Final touch for English: Sir Robert, GB, and Michele Denber, USA.
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This is only for the ones who are interested to konw how all this started:

How did the virtual museum come into being?

After the unexpected great success of the book «Radios von gestern» (first edition 1989, 5 editions, and after «Radiokatalog volume 1» had been finished, I decided to publish both books on the web before finishing volume 2, in order to facilitate this «on-line-reference book», a meeting place for all interested collectors.

I wanted to help collectors avoid doing multiple work in different places, when they didn't know of the existence of like minded individuals. We can already see this happening on the web - I consider this pitiful nonsense. For example, considering the innumerable times the 11 schematics books of Lange- Nowisch have been scanned, consuming thousands of hours of work and represented in different qualities on CDs or partly on the web, the waste of time and energy is clearly visible.

It is obvious that we can achieve much more when working together in a well coordinated way. I first tried to introduce my idea to a big club - which showed no interest. Therefore I have been working full time on the realization of this project since 1999. I had to learn, accepting that only one single person can tackle this big task - someone who is a passionate and interested collector and who is in possession of the demanded time and financial resources.

Apart from the help of specialized software companies it is absolutely necessary to have a profound knowledge of the Internet which I first had to obtain by hard work. It took three attempts to find a software company which was capable of realizing my demanding plans nearly to my satisfaction. However, the software produced was a mess. Being unprofessional, non structured «spaghetti code», incapable of identifying search engines were only the worst problems. Since I had experience in founding and establishing a software house I thought the age of amateurish software development was over. But I was wrong, and in the end this company even went bankrupt.

Since 2002 we have a new solution, realized in my house with a software engineer (from ETH) at my side. Our vision has largely come true, delivering all the information a real radio lover would want to know about in a logical and systematic form, reaching thousands of collectors every day.