Rediscover Nostalgia: Do You Remember These 10 Antique Washington Radio Items?

Shout out to Guglielmo Marconi, who invented the radio in the 1890s. I think my career in radio could/should have been predicted when I was a kid. My dad, Herschel Lee, would walk around the house sometimes and give us orders to clean up the house in his "radio voice."

"Clean up your room! You're listening to WCOS, Cosby Radio!" he would say, amusing himself. He would also randomly give us his "station identification," too. He just loved imitating radio disc jockeys, as they used to be called. He grew up listening to radio legends like Wolfman Jack. I think my dad missed his calling as a radio jock!

I also used to force my friends to read "Barbie" commercials that I wrote on college-ruled notebook paper when I was a tweenager. I wrote out their lines like a script and had them repeat what I had written down and say it into my tape recorder!😂

Does anybody (besides me) remember listening to Radio Disney?

I remember reading R&R magazine (Radio & Records) and listening to Radio Disney on the radio underneath my pillow when I was supposed to be sleeping. This was during the mid-90s in my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. I discovered that if I moved the dial around on the AM channels at night, I could faintly pick up a radio frequency blasting Radio Disney all the way from Atlanta, Georgia. They even had a broadcast coming out of Seattle!

I consider myself blessed to have gotten into the radio biz after equipment pieces like the reel-to-reel had been discontinued. I don't think I would have been able to splice together tape the right way back in those days.

I don't think I would have been able to pass the FCC license test that deejays had to do back in the day. I also would have probably forgotten to take the Transmitter Logs and meter readings according to schedule, ha!

Take a ride in the wayback machine as we look at some equipment radio deejays used to use. Most of these are considered vintage and "antiques" now!