Crystal Radio
Inventory No. MNS KW 19112, EI/5526
Material: wood, ebonite, bakelite
Dimensions: box: 14 x 16 x 5.5 cm
Dating: 1920s
Place of origin: Nowy Sącz
The community school from the village of Nowe Rybie in the Limanowa Poviat (powiat limanowski) is an exhibit that stands out in comparison to other buildings in the Sącz museum. Constructed at the end of the 1920s / beginning of the 1930s, it comprises two classrooms, an administrative office, and the teacher's premises. One of the rooms is arranged in the post-war style of the 1950s, as the school used to operate in this building until the 1960s. Furniture and fittings in the other rooms are typical for the inter-war period. The petty bourgeois style of interior design of the residential premises, comprising a hall, a kitchen and a room intended for the teacher, differs from that of the rural cottages. Various items and pieces of equipment can be seen here that one would not find in typical homes of residents of the contemporary villages in the Sącz region. One such item is located in the teacher’s room, on the cupboard by the bed. It is a small size rectangular brown box equipped with sockets for cables, a round knob and several other elements whose purpose that may be difficult for a layman to guess. Black ebonite earphones on an aluminium loop are attached to the box. The earphones make it slightly easier to guess what the mysterious box is – it is a radio receiver. The majority of us, when thinking about a radio receiver from the inter-war period, imagine rather large devices, often in decorative casings, quite costly and requiring electric power. This image does not really correspond to the modest apartment of a rural teacher in a small village near Limanowa at the time when electrification had not yet reached the majority of villages in Poland. However, it turns out that in the inter-war period, ordinary cheap radio receivers were used that did not require electricity or even batteries! The radio receiver from Nowe Rybie is an example of just such an inventive device. This is the so-called crystal radio. So, what was the ‘crystal’ and how did such radio operate? Before this question is answered, some most important facts from the history of the radio should be mentioned. Radio waves form a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is present everywhere in the universe. The spectrum includes, among others, visible light, ultraviolet and infra-red, microwaves, X-ray and gamma radiation, while individual types differ with vibration frequency. Theoretically, the existence of electromagnetic waves was discovered in 1864 by the Scottish researcher James Clerk Maxwell, while their existence was empirically proven by the German scientist Heinrich Rudolf Herz in 1887. Soon afterwards, work on the practical use of radio waves was launched: a ‘wireless telegraph’ was constructed. The pioneer in this area was the famous inventor of Serbian origin, Nicola Tesla. His dream was to create a device to transfer electric energy without wire, with the use of radio waves. Already in 1898, Tesla patented remote control that made use of radio waves. He managed to construct a high voltage coil to send electromagnetic waves and started to work on the construction of a radio receiver. His idea was used by Guglielmo Marconi, who earlier sought a radio patent and in 1901 sent a radio signal across the Atlantic. It was only in the 1940s, already after Tesla's death, that the Supreme Court of the USA awarded the patent rights to him, and therefore nowadays most people associate Marconi with the inventor of the radio. The first radio transmission of sound and music took place in the first decade of the 20th century, while the first regular broadcast of a radio programme started in 1920 in the United States. The first test radio programme in Poland was made on 1 February 1925, and in April next year, regular broadcasts were launched. May 1931 saw the opening of what then was the most powerful radio transmitter in Europe, the broadcasting station in Raszyn, which covered 90% of Poland’s territory back then. The first crystal radio receivers appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. The crystal detector used to detect radio waves was the first semi-conducting element applied in technology. For its construction, a crystalline mineral with semi-conductor properties was used; it was usually galena (natural mineral, lead sulphite) and synthetic crystals. Until WWII, germanium point-contact diodes were used. In crystal detectors, the junction was at the point of contact of the crystal with a thin steel wire. The wire was set in a manipulator that allowed for finding a point with the best properties on the crystal. The major advantages of crystal radio receivers include their simple structure (with adequate materials, anyone could build one) and an independent power supply – the set was supplied with energy from its antennae (which, however, had to be very large; proper grounding was also essential). Although the sound was quite weak – the energy was sufficient only to power the earphones – and the receiver picked up only the closest and strongest radio signal, back then only one programme was broadcast, so this drawback was irrelevant. In the course of time, along with the spread of electrification, crystal radio receivers were replaced with the superior vacuum tube radios. In the inter-war period in Poland, still very unevenly electrified, simple crystal radio receivers were still very popular, while their owners paid a smaller subscription fee than the users of vacuum tube radio receivers. The best known receivers produced in Poland back then were called ‘Detefon’. The radio receiver exhibited in our museum has the ‘Detefon’ earphones, while the receiver is another model of an unidentified manufacturer. Crystal radio receivers turned out to be especially useful in areas where there was no access to the electrical grid. On that note, it must be said that the electrification of Poland took several dozen years and varied from region to region. The differences between individual areas of the country were visible primarily in the inter-war period, when the disparities in the general economic development of the areas of the contemporary Poland were exacerbated by the division of Poland between three different partitioning states in the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, precisely when very rapid social, economic and technological changes were taking place in the majority of the European countries. One of the major tasks facing the young Polish state was to merge the three former partitions and standardise their administration and operation, most especially as concerned infrastructure. For example, approx. 500 villages in the territory of the Prussian partition were electrified already before WWI, while the authorities of Russia and Austro-Hungary undertook no electrification activities outside of major cities. The twenty years between the two world wars was too short a time to rectify the imbalance and to make up for the everlasting delays in development projects. At the end of the 1930s, residents mostly of Śląsk, Pomorze, parts of Mazowsze and Wielkopolska had access to electricity. In other areas of Poland, a small percentage of villages were electrified, and at the outbreak of WWII, a mere 1,250 locations were electrified, i.e., less than 5% of the country. At the war’s end, however, 3,500 villages (8% of the country) had access to electricity. Why the difference? Simply the change in borders. Poland lost its Eastern Borderlands, while the newly added western and northern areas which had belonged to Germany had a well-developed infrastructure. After the end of the war, work on electrification of the entire country was started. At the time, there was also the problem of repairing the infrastructure destroyed during the war. Apart from areas not electrified at all before, there were also households or even entire villages overlooked during earlier electrification efforts. Right after the war, in Kraków Province, there were poviats where approx. 1/4th of the households were already using electricity (Chrzanów, an industrial area, and Nowy Targ, due to the high voltage line to Zakopane), as well as those where not even one village had electricity (Limanowa, Proszowice, Sucha). According to the data of 1945, in the Nowy Sącz Poviat (powiat nowosądecki), only one village was electrified. In this area, electricity was provided the earliest to the residents of suburban households around Nowy Sącz (due to the ease of connecting to the electricity network in the area of a city) and to Rożnów (not far from a hydroelectric plant). By 1960, over 90% of the villages in the western provinces were electrified, while in the central and eastern provinces the figure was still below 50%. In Kraków Province at the same time, 67% of rural households had access to electricity, but as of October 1959 in the Nowy Sącz Poviat only 30% of the villages had electricity. The situation improved over the next 10 years. In 1970, only 15% households had no electricity; this was primarily related to their remoteness and difficulties with laying the installations. In the Kraków Poviat, over 92% of households were electrified. In the course of the next several decades, electrification of rural areas in Poland was completed, even though in the 1990s it was still possible to come across individual hamlets, settlements and houses with no electricity. Even though today it is difficult to imagine life without electricity, a few decades ago this was the reality in many villages in the Sącz region. The rural world without electricity can be seen at the exhibition in the Sądecki Ethnographic Park. However, we also show you how the old world was changing. In the building of the school from Nowe Rybie, we can see both a crystal radio receiver which was built at a time when access to electricity was a rare luxury, as well as electric lights assembled when electrification eventually reached the villages in the Limanowa and Sącz area in the post-war period. Another example is a mill building from Kamienica in the sector of folk industry, with its interior arranged in the post-war style and with electric lights attesting to the electrification of the village of Kamienica in the 1960s. Finally, it should be noted that according to the statistical data between the mid-1950s and the year 1960, the number of vacuum tube radios (requiring power from the network) owned by the residents of Polish villages grew six times; therefore, these times saw the ultimate end of the popularity of crystal radio receivers, which from then on were but an interesting technical titbit from the past.
Board ‘Scenes from the Life of Slavs – Prehistoric Landscape of Poland’
Inventory No. MP/2865
Dimensions: width: 64.5 cm, height: 47 cm
Dating: 1934
Place of origin: Krynica Zdrój (Nowy Sącz Poviat, Małopolska Province) (powiat nowosądecki, woj. małpopolskie)
Introduced during the Second Polish Republic, compulsory education provided for the education of rural children. Apart from basic skills and knowledge about the surrounding world, emphasis was put on the teaching of history and formation of patriotic stances in young children. This was very important from the perspective of the newly created state; the Polish nation had struggled with the Germanisation and Russification efforts of the partitioning states for decades. Thus, in the room arranged in the inter-war style, the walls feature multiple drawings of historical events from the history of Poland and depictions of kings and national heroes. One of them presents a scene in the life of Slavs and the original environment of Poland. The drawing includes the following inscriptions: ‘In compliance with the guidelines of Professor Witold Bunikiewicz, Ph.D.’, ‘Drawn by M. Gralewska’, ‘Series LII. September 1934’. In the foreground is the shore of a lake with a section of forest and two figures. The first is a blonde man in a white robe, holding an axe in one hand and an arrow in the other. The man is standing in a characteristic posture; he is shown sideways, which resembles the style of showing people on ancient vases and works of art. The second person, on the right hand side of the painting, is a young woman in white, gauzy robes and with two blonde braids. She is with her hands raised standing next to a stone figure of Svetovit (Światowid, a Slavic god). She is holding something that resembles a flowery garland. In the background there is a lake and a forest. A small island is located in the middle of the lake with a wooden hut with a palisade built around it. In front of the building is an elderly man with a long beard and a cane, dressed in dark clothes and a hood. The drawing has bright colours. The described board refers to the origin of the Polish state, which today relies on multiple hypotheses, but nevertheless remaining a puzzle for numerous researchers. In the context of the rising German nationalism of the 1920s and 1930s, the scientific debate about Slavs was intermixed with numerous political and ideological issues. This was particularly clear in the context of the genesis of Slavs and their so-called homeland. Two theories clashed here: autochthonous and allochthonous. According to the former, the cradle of Slavs were the lands from the Oder to the Bug River. This concept was promoted in particular by the Polish researchers because it legitimised Poland's right to the areas which used to comprise the Prussian partition not so long ago. In turn, the German researchers were in favour of the allochthonous theory, in line with which the Slavs arrived at the Vistula from the east, from the areas of today's Ukraine, at the time when the present-day territory of Poland was inhabited by Germanic tribes. Echoes of these discussions were reflected in the unique discovery from that period that reverberated both in Poland and in Europe. In 1933, as a result of drainage and irrigation work, the level of water in Lake Biskupińskie was lowered so much that remnants of an ancient settlement became visible. Local peasants started to find ancient items without being aware of their archaeological value. The strange finds became known to others only when the local schoolchildren informed the teacher, Walery Szwajcar, and he publicised the case. The discovery was of a Lusatian settlement dating to the 8th century BCE, which today is understood as the starting point of Poland's history. The issue of the ethnic affiliation of Biskupin was used for the aforementioned ideological purposes during the disputes pertaining to various countries’ claims to territories within today's Poland. It is nowadays assumed that the ethnic affiliation of the Lusatian culture, as with the majority of other ancient archaeological cultures, cannot be determined beyond doubt.
Teaching Aid ‘Potato Beetle: Larvae and Mature Insects’
Inventory No. MP/9227/E
Material: wood, paper, glass, glue, dissected insects
Dimensions: length 17 cm, width 16 cm
height 3 cm
Dating: second half of the 20th century
Place of origin: Obidza near Jazowsko (Małopolska Province, Nowy Sącz Poviat) (woj. Małopolskie, pow. nowosądecki)
Among numerous teaching aids compiled in the school from Nowe Rybie, in the classroom arranged in a set up typical for the period after WWII, if we look inside the cupboard with the glazed door, we might at first not notice the small rectangular item sitting on the shelf along with the other school exhibits. Take a careful look at it, because this inconspicuous box is related to the invasion of our land by a foreign species, used by the authorities of the Polish People's Republic in a great propaganda effort against the ‘American imperialists.’ The small flat box in the shape resembling a cube was made of wood or plywood. Its sides are lined with paper painted in violet colour with convex texture, reinforced in the corners with strips of black paper. The top of the box is covered with glass under which is a sheet of thin white paper onto which dissected specimens of potato beetle in various stages of development were glued. At the top, there is a calligraphy caption in black ink: ‘Potato beetle.’ Below, nineteen larvae of the beetle (one missing) are presented in two rows and described underneath as ‘larvae.’ Below it are four specimens of the mature form of the insect with characteristic stripy wings, beneath which are the words, ‘Mature insects.’ At the bottom of the case is a handwritten note: ‘Execution: School headmaster / Antoni Paluch/ Primary School Obidza 1.’ Potatoes were brought to Europe from the American continent during the age of great geographic discoveries. In Poland, they became popular at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, several dozen years later becoming one of the basic food components of the rural population. The beetle is this vegetable’s most notorious pest. The striped beetle originated in the state of Colorado, in the USA; the beetle arrived in Europe at the turn of the 20th century, probably accidentally making its way on ships transporting food. The beetle resurfaced first in the Baltic states and in western Russia at the end of the 19th century. The beetle infested Lithuania and the neighbourhood of Suwałki, where the infestation’s epicentre was radically destroyed by burning with the use of petroleum. The potato beetle started to appear in large numbers in Europe after WWI, beginning with France in the early 1920s and later spreading to other areas of the continent. In Poland, the beetle had already appeared here and there at the end of the inter-war period and later in larger numbers at the end of the war. It is assumed that the insect could have made its entrance into Poland at the time of the Nazi occupation, introduced with cargoes of potatoes transported from Germany for the German army stationed on the territory of Poland. The first major invasion of the beetle took place in 1950, and ever since, the insect has been the most serious pest affecting potato farming. The authorities of the People's Republic of Poland used the beetle for propaganda purposes, identifying it as a ‘political pest’ and claiming that aircraft belonging to ‘Western imperialists’ dropped the insects onto Polish territory. Pest control activities undertaken back then consisted in mass actions on orders from the top, that had school youths and army conscripts gathering the beetles by hand from fields and croplands; only later did pest control through the use of chemical agents – pesticides – become commonplace. People were educated during rural meetings; there were posters, proclamations and articles in the press (primarily in ‘Trybuna Ludu’) and instructional publications. The cover of the brochure titled ‘Potato Beetle’ by Z. Kowalska of 1951 features a drawing of the insect with a parachute and in the background a plane releasing a swarm of beetles. Subsequent plagues of potato beetle were explained by the authorities as ‘sabotage by the enemies of socialism’, while the insect was considered the main cause of food shortages in the 1950s. The ‘display case’ in the school from Nowe Rybie with specimens of the beetle was prepared by the school headmaster as instruction material; pupils sent to the fields to collect the beetles needed to know how the insect looked in individual stages of development to make sure as many beetles were removed as possible. This small box is thus an interesting testament of the times when even insects were used for the purposes of aggressive political propaganda.
