Mini road trip: Riding the waves in the mountains

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The discussion centers on a visit to Asheville, NC, highlighting two key attractions: the Moogseum and the Asheville Radio Museum. The Moogseum, dedicated to Robert Moog and the history of synthesized music, features exhibits on early synthesizers and a reconstruction of Moog's workbench. Visitors must reserve tickets due to limited capacity. The Asheville Radio Museum, run by a ham radio club, showcases a vast collection of vintage radio equipment, including crystal radios and vacuum tubes, and is open only on Saturdays. The visitor also mentions a desire to hike to Mount Pisgah, home to the highest television transmitter east of the Mississippi, further connecting the experience to radio waves and sound waves. The discussion concludes with a light-hearted note on a couch designed to resemble a Minimoog synthesizer, emphasizing the blend of technology and art in music history.
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In this case, the waves are sound waves and radio waves. On Saturday, I drove up to Asheville NC for some sightseeing. Although I've been to stamp and model-train shows south of town nearby many times, I had never done any real sightseeing downtown, only driven through it.

Stop 1

My main destination downtown was the Moogseum, which showcases the life and work of Robert Moog, of synthesizer fame. He moved to the Asheville area after retiring from his signature company in New York.

moogseum.jpg


The museum is small but has interesting exhibits about Moog's life and the history of synthesized music, including predecessors to the Moog synthesizers such as the theremin and the ondes Martenot, with which I'm acquainted via Olivier Messiaen's music. Moog started his career by building and selling theremins as a teenager in the 1950s. There's a reconstruction of Moog's workbench as it was when he died in 2005. I was amused to recognize items that my students and I used in undergraduate labs: Fluke multimeters, Tektronix oscilloscopes, etc.

When I was in high school in the late 1960s, two of the first albums I bought were Walter/Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach and The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, which helped make Moog famous.

Unfortunately, the museum doesn't allow photography except in the entrance area / gift shop. Underneath the portrait is a couch made up to look like a synthesizer.

bobmoog.jpg


Because of its small size and Covid restrictions, the museum can currently accommodate only a limited number of visitors at a time. I bought my ticket and made a reservation for a specific hour online.
 
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I arrived in Asheville earlier than I expected, so I had some time for exploring before my reserved time at the Moogseum.

Downtown Asheville has a lot of small shops, restaurants, brewpubs, nightclubs, etc., most of which were just starting to open in late morning. The central plaza is Pack Square, presided over at one end by the Buncombe County courthouse and the Asheville city hall.

packsquare.jpg


It also had some nice specimens of fall color.

fallcolors.jpg


Not far from the Moogseum is the boyhood home of novelist Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), who is generally considered to be North Carolina's most famous writer. The house is now a NC state historical site.

wolfehouse.jpg


I didn't take the tour through the house because I was a bit short of time by then, but I did look at the exhibits in the visitor center. They include artifacts from his apartment in New York City. When he died suddenly from complications of pneumonia, his brother gathered up his belongings and shipped them back to Asheville.

wolfedesk.jpg


wolfestuff.jpg


The radio ties in with my next stop...
 
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Speaking of theremins... here are a couple of snippets from the theremin concerto by the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho:

 
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Speaking of Theremins? I thought we were speaking of moogs.

Jazz composer Dick Hyman and a song from his Minotaur album entitled the Moog and Me

 
Stop 3

After finishing at the Moogseum, I drove to the Asheville Radio Museum, which is open only 1-3 PM on Saturdays. Getting there was a bit of an adventure. I had to use my car's GPS and follow the directions and photos on the web site. I ended up on the third floor of a classroom/lab building at Asheville-Buncombe Technical College ("A-B Tech").

entrance.jpg


generalview.jpg


As you can see, this place is chock full of stuff. A homemade Hertzian spark-gap transmitter:

sparkgap.jpg


Crystal radios:

crystalradios.jpg


oatmeal.jpg


Vacuum tubes:

vacuumtube.jpg


And more...
 
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Stop 3 continued

More stuff from the radio museum...

It's maintained by an amateur (ham) radio club, so it has a large collection of vintage ham radio equipment:

hamradio.jpg


The Hammarlund company had its main factory in nearby Mars Hill NC from 1951 to 1973.

Ham radio operators honor legacy of Mars Hill company (Asheville Citizen Times, 2020)

hammarlund.jpg


Downed pilots in World War II used this emergency radio to signal their location to rescuers. They held the radio by its curved sides between their thighs, and turned the crank on top to power it.

gibsongirl.jpg


A Latvian radio of the 1930s-1940s has a tuning dial that names the different cities it could receive (mostly northern Europe):

tuningdial.jpg


An early TV set:

philco.jpg


A radio and 8-track tape combo from the 1960s-1970s:

8track.jpg


A hallway display elsewhere in the building has a collection of tabletop radios:

halldisplay.jpg
 
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Addendum

When I did this trip, I was hoping to make another stop that fit in with the radio theme of the museum, but I ran out of daylight.

Last weekend I was in the Asheville area again for a stamp show, and had enough time to make a detour onto the Blue Ridge Parkway to view Mount Pisgah, elevation 5721 ft (1744 m).

This is the site of the highest television transmitter in the US east of the Mississippi River. It hosts two Asheville TV stations, WLOS (ABC) and WUNF (PBS-NC), that my wife and I watch regularly via our rooftop antenna more than 80 miles (130 km) away in the "lowlands" of the South Carolina piedmont region.

One of these days I want to hike the trail to the summit.

Pisgah1.jpg


pisgah2.jpg
 
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  • #10
jtbell said:
bobmoog-jpg.jpg
A very funny bench in that photo! (or small sofa?) :smile:
And very nice photos of cool gear and locations, thanks for posting!
 
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DennisN said:
A very funny bench in that photo! (or small sofa?) :smile:
And very nice photos of cool gear and locations, thanks for posting!

Yes (from what I gather), it's a comfy sofa/couch/bench made as a quite accurate depiction of the Minimoog, Model D.

20px-Minimoog_model_D_%28early_1970s%29%2C_MIM_PHX.jpg

Figure 1. Minimoog Model D

Here's a Wikipedia article on the instrument (all models): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimoog

Here's a video with the unmistakable sound of the Minimoog instrument (may have to be watched on YouTube, since embedding may be disabled):



Edit: Oh, and lest we forget Gary Numan, here's the song Cars, primarily made/recorded with a Minimoog (along with a Polymoog Keyboard):
 
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