SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention

Street view of the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention

The SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention (formerly the American Museum of Radio and Electricity) is an interactive museum located in Bellingham, Washington, United States, which offers educational experiences for audiences of all ages through galleries and public programs that illustrate the development and use of electricity, radio and the related inventions that changed the course of human history. The museum features a collection of artifacts showcasing four centuries of human innovation from 1580 into the 1950s.

Museum history

Thomas Edison lightbulbs, 1879 and 1880

The museum began in 1985 as an informal collection of radio sets, spare parts, schematics, recordings, and vintage magazines and manuals owned by a Bellingham resident, Jonathan Winter Winter's collection continued to grow, and by 1998, the Bellingham Antique Radio Museum was officially established, with the more than 800 radio sets from Winter's collection forming the core of the museum's collection.

The museum took on the name "American Museum of Radio and Electricity" in 2001 when it moved into its 23,000-square-foot (2,100 m²) facility and John Jenkins, a former sales and marketing executive at Microsoft, retired and became co-curator of the museum. Jenkins added his extensive collection to the museum, which included early wireless and electrical devices, and rare books with first editions dating back to 1560 and written by Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, C. F. du Fay, Benjamin Franklin, Luigi Galvani, William Gilbert, Joseph Henry, Heinrich Hertz, James Clerk Maxwell, Pieter van Musschenbroek, Georg Ohm, Hans Christian Ørsted, Alessandro Volta, among others.

Early in its history, the museum was featured on An American Moment. In 2012, the American Museum of Radio and Electricity became Spark Museum of Electrical Invention.

Collections

Saprk Museum Light Bulbs

The museum's collections include:

• Dawn of the Electrical Age (1600–1800)
• Electricity Sparks Invention (1800–1900)
• The Beginning of Radio and the Wireless Era (1863–1920)
• Radio Enters the Home (1920–1927)
• The Golden Age of Radio (1928–1950)

Notable exhibits

Exhibits include:

• an extensive "War of the Currents" exhibit, featuring one of a kind artifacts. The exhibit also includes a working replica of Tesla's "Egg of Columbus".

Spark Museum AC DC Exhibit

• a reproduction of the radio room of the Titanic complete with original Marconi wireless apparatus
• examples of early (1850) automated musical instruments that allowed you to enjoy music without having to know how to play it and a selection of early phonographs

Spark Museum Early Automated Musical Instruments

• a working 1929 theremin and a modern Moog Theremin that visitors can play (RCA Theremin Model AR 1264, No. 200085

Spark Museum Theremin

• a complete collection of Atwater Kent "breadboard" radios
• One of a very few of the Spartin Visionola home entertaiment centers that include a radio and a movie projector that is synchronized with a phonograph to enable movies with sound with the sound track on a record, which was the method of movies with sound prior to the modern sound-on-film sountracks

Spark Museum Radios and Visionola Entertainment Console

• one of the largest collections of 19th century electromagnetic apparatus in the country, including early telegraph, telephone, electric motors, dynamos and induction coils

Spark Museum Telegraph

• a collection of electric lighting and related apparatus, including several lamps from the laboratory of Thomas Edison.
• Demonstration Tesla coils including the "MegaZapper, an 8' tall 4MV coil used in the Museum's Electrical Show.
• a Collins 1909 wireless telephone
• a 1930s living room diorama

Spark Museum Radio Living Room

• a static electricity learning center

Spark Museum Static Lab

• a selection of early (1800's) static electricity experimental equipment used by Ben Franklin and others to learn static electricity

Spark Museum Antique Static Equipment

• a working RCA CT-100 Television
• a 1915 telephone used by Henry L. Higginson in the first transcontinental telephone call.
• a copy of the famous W.M. Welch chart of electromagnetic radiation that was used in many colleges and laboratories starting in the 1940's

Spark Museum Electromagnetic Radiation

Science education program

The museum's education program includes outreach and community education. The outreach program augments the regular science curriculum of public schools, private schools and home-school networks in Western Washington through assemblies, in-class science courses and special focus tours. The community education program holds regular Science Saturday classes, summer camps, lectures and special events illuminating core facets of radio, electricity and physics. Hands-on classes include topics such as static electricity, magnetism, motors, circuits, and crystal radios.

In 2018, the SPARK education program served nearly 2,000 students.

Events

Spark Museum Megazapper demonstration

Spark Museum Tesla Demonstration

Spark Museum Auditorium

Past events include:

• The Chuckanut Radio Hour
• Midnight Mystery Players
• Art Of Jazz Series
• Sustainable Connections
• LinuxFest Northwest
• Bellingham Robot Festival
• An Evening with Benjamin Franklin
• Lectures, including "The roots of radio", "The untold story of the telephone", "The untold story of the telegraph", and "The war of the currents" by Museum President John Jenkins

See also

• 20th Century Technology Museum
• Museum of Radio and Technology
• Museum of Broadcast Communications
• National Radio Hall of Fame

External links

• SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention website