Skip to main content

Radio And Television Museum

Radio And Television Museum

Located in the historic Harmel House, the Radio and Television Museum offers exhibits of early broadcast history.

The Radio and Television Museum explores broadcast history from Marconi's earliest wireless telegraph, through early crystal sets of the 1920s, Depression-era cathedral radios, postwar portables and the development of television.

The museum is located in a 1906 storekeeper's house, which was first the home of the Edlavitch family, Russian Jews who came to the area in 1888. Today the structure is called Harmel House, commemorating the long tenure of the Harmel family, who operated a store there until 1985. Damaged by fire, the house was renovated by the City of Bowie and in 1999 became the home of the Radio and Television Museum. Visitors to the museum enjoy exhibits and hands-on activities.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Featured Articles

Rarely has the full story been told how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.