Voice of America Museum

My wife and I recently visited the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting near Cincinnati, Ohio.  I've known about this place for a long time and being a radio nut you would have thought I'd visited years ago especially since it's less than an hour away.  The museum sits inside the Bethany Relay Station, the original building used by the VOA from 1943 until 1994.  At the beginning of World War II, Adolf Hitler was using radio as an effective propaganda tool.  President Franklin Roosevelt needed something to spread the truth back into Germany.  Local entrepreneur Powell Crosley Jr. and his team of engineers provided the technical knowhow and soon turned an unassuming field into the most powerful shortwave transmitting site in the world.  Crosley also owned WLW "The Nation's Station" whose distinctive Blaw-Knox tower is located about a mile up the road from the museum.  VOA programming originated from Washington DC and was sent by telephone line (and later satellite) to be sent around the world via Bethany's towers.  Today the Voice of America is broadcast in 48 languages to an estimated weekly worldwide audience of over 320 million people.

Main control room

A scale model of the VOA Bethany grounds.  The towers were razed in the late 1990s but the switching matrix, where they changed antenna configurations by hand, still stands.

About half of the museum is focused on the VOA while the other half is the medium of radio in general including memorabilia and tons of vintage radios.

In 1940 Powell Crosley commenced broadcasts on WLWO, one of only about a dozen shortwave stations in the United States at the time.  Meanwhile, Germany operated 68 shortwave transmitters and Japan had 42, both of which pumped out propaganda and psychological warfare.  Crosley's experience with powerful shortwave signals made him a good choice for helping set up the Voice of America.

My wife tapping out "I-f  Y-o-u  T-a-k-e  M-y  P-i-c-t-u-r-e,  I  W-i-l-l  K-i-l-l  Y-o-u" using Morse Code.

An actual unit owned by the inventor of wireless telegraphy Guglielmo Marconi.

"This just in....I'm a radio nerd"

Both of my chins really loved this place!

I bought a t-shirt at the gift shop.  A local brewery makes this lager named after what Hitler called the folks at the VOA--"The Cincinnati Liars."

I brought a sticker to the museum to donate if they didn't already have it on display.  It was a 40th anniversary decal which can be seen here.  They seemed pleased to get it and I plan on mailing them the rest of these stickers as well.  Seems like a better place for them than in a box at my house.