The 1950s and especially the second half of that decade were a time of unprecedented development of the phonographic industry. The above-mentioned tape recorder played a significant role in that development; after its introduction to the recording studios, it greatly facilitated and accelerated the process of gramophone record production. Previously, the sound was recorded in the studio on a soft disc called a master from which a metal negative was created to make copies. The recording could not be interrupted and each mistake meant that the process had to start again from the beginning. The use of magnetic recording made it possible to correct errors without repeating the whole work. A tape recorder prototype came into being in Denmark; it was a cylindrical telegraphone patented towards the end of the 19th century by Valdemar Poulsen. The telegraphone that was presented at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris is now kept in Helletrup with a historic recording of the voice of Emperor Franz Joseph that is considered the oldest magnetic recording of sound. Another interesting exhibit in this room is the MELODIA reel-to-reel tape recorder, which was both the first of this type produced in Poland and the first whose production was entirely with Polish components. Developed in 1958, a team of assemblers supervised by engineer R. Patryn applied a solution that was unique at the time: two-track, bidirectional recording and playback (two separate sets of half-track heads). It weighed about 18 kg. The Kasprzak Radio Plant in Warsaw started producing it in 1959. This model began the era of tape recorders in Poland, which was to last more or less till the end of the 1980s when modern digital sound processing techniques were developed.

The 1950s were also the heyday of vacuum tube radios. Note a few interesting examples:

PIONIER – created in 1948 in the Diora Plant (by the team under the direction of Engineer Wilhelm Rutkiewicz), it became one of the most characteristic and iconic object produced in the PRL. It was cheap and widely available, with more than one million copies made in almost twenty years of production.

FIGARO 3291 – a Polish radio manufactured in the Marcin Kasprzak Radio Plant in Warsaw. It was created in record time, i.e., after 3 months of work, to fulfil a commitment made to celebrate the Third Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) in 1958 but its production did not start until a year later. It was a popular, cheap, quite modern and cost-effective radio.

KOŁCHOŹNIK–a loudspeaker in a casing, which was used to listen to radio broadcasts transmitted by wire radio. It was a tool for spreading pro-government communist propaganda. It was not possible to change the station, only volume could be adjusted. The name referred to the ‘kolkhoz’, a cooperative farm widespread in the Soviet Union.   

Phonographic inventions of the 1960s included the cassette recorder (1963, Philips), multi-track tape recordings (1965), the first noise reduction system (Ray Dolby, 1967) and quadraphonic recording on a gramophone record (1969). In Poland, the real hits of the decade included the BAMBINO gramophone and the ZK 120 recorder manufactured under Grundig license. All these devices can be seen in this room. The origins of television broadcasting in the world date back to the 1920s. The first public demonstration of a working television took place in 1926. Before World War II, Poland was one of the few countries worldwide to conduct its own scientific and experimental research into television with good practical results. The forerunner of television in Poland was Jan Szczepanik known as the ‘Polish Edison’ who patented a ‘telectroscope’ at the British Patent Office in 1897, describing it as ‘an apparatus for reproducing images at a distance by means of electricity’. Engineer Stefan Manczarski made a major contribution to the development of Polish television. His work in the 1930s led to the organisation of the first television centre that was to be launched in 1940. The war thwarted these plans.

Examples of TV sets popular in the 1960s:

TURKUS – a device designed using Belweder subassemblies and the first fully Polish television set. It was produced in the Warsaw Television Plant.

TESLA – Czechoslovakia, early 1960s.

SZMARAGD 902 – Wars Television Plant in the early 1960s.