Al Jazeera Children’s Channel presented Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) 34 rare radio devices manufactured and used in the 1950’s through to the 1970’s.

Conserved in Doha, these devices are highly functioning, and some of them date back to the introduction of stereo radio broadcasting. Abdullah Al Najjar, CEO of QMA received the gift from Mahmoud Bounab, General Manager of Al Jazeera Children.

Al Najjar expressed his thanks to Al Jazeera Children adding, “QMA is a Qatari social and cultural foundation that extends worldwide and aims to help highlight cultural material and unique works of art and literature, Furthermore, QMA wants to display such pieces both for public enjoyment and for the sake of their preservation in a prestigious institution such as the Museum of Islamic Art.”

“This gift that Al Jazeera Children has presented to QMA is the result of years of research and maintenance for the preservation of these devices that embody media history in the form of radio receivers since radio was, and still is, the most popular form of media worldwide,” said Bounab. He was also pleased that these devices are now at QMA where they represent perhaps the beginnings of a museum specialising in the development of media and communications as part of the new up and coming QMA projects.

The newly acquired radio receivers have been collected and preserved for over 20 years in several different European countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Holland. They carry labels that indicate their date of registration and use on short and medium frequencies, followed by FM. They were acquired by Qatar in 2008 from Switzerland.
Source: The PENINSULA