Indian man keeps and restores private museum of over 100 antique radios

A man in India has amassed a private museum featuring over 100 rare and antique radios.

A man in India has amassed a private museum featuring over 100 rare and antique radios.

An electronics engineer by trade, Uday Kalburgi, opened his museum, the Short Wave Radio Museum and Knowledge Centre in the city of Bangalore.

It has a praiseworthy collection of over 110 radios, including some classic, vintage and rare pieces dating back to over a century.

Kalburgi explained in an interview: "Every radio here has a story behind it.

One of the pieces here is a Grundig Export Boy 204 from 1964 on which a person had listened to a number of romantic songs with his wife.

After his wife died, he did not want that radio to go waste and donated it to the museum so that the memory of his wife could live on." In his collection, the oldest is a 1914 Westinghouse radio, which has individual coils which need to be inserted to change the stations.

The most prized collection is a 1940 Marconi R1155 military radio, which was used in bomber plane cockpits in World War II and was sourced from Britain.

The Marconi is currently not on display as Kalburgi is restoring it by sourcing original parts from different corners of the world.

Another rare radio, a 1936 Pilot G774B, manufactured in Brooklyn NY, was a gift by the Royal Family of Kerala.

Kalburgi added that there are 20 more rare radio sets, he has collected over the years and are in the process of being restored.