Historical radios

You will find ‘historic’ radios in the Schatzalp rooms, and there is a story behind them too!

Biennophone Minitel 43 NB

More than 70 years ago, Hotel Schatzalp wanted to enable its guests to get radio programs in their rooms. At that time, however, operating a radio was not easy, and tuning into stations in mountainous regions was a matter of luck. In 1931, however, ‘Telefon-Rundspruch’ was introduced in Switzerland. This made it possible to receive six stations in acceptable quality over the telephone line.

The devices suitable for ‘Telefon-Rundspruch’ were quite simple and easy to use:

On / Off button
Volume control
6 buttons for 6 radio stations

Three ‘generations’ of these devices are still in use at Schatzalp. The oldest still run with radio tubes, the others with transistors. Our showpiece is the device Biennophone Minitel 43 NB pictured above, which was introduced by the Swiss PTT in 1981 for the 50th anniversary of the ‘Telefon-Rundspruch’. In the meantime it is one of the classics and is mentioned in articles about the history of the radio.

(Link to the folio supplement of the NZZ)

Unfortunately, in the year 1998 the ‘Telefon-Rundspruch’ was discontinued with the introduction of ISDN, as the harmonics of the ISDN disturbed the signals of the ‘Telefon-Rundspruch’. We would have had to replace all devices with new FM radios. Fortunately, we found a company that made us a device that transformed the FM signals of six radio stations into the ancient ‘Telefon-Rundspruch’ signal. This allows the historical devices to continue to be used today.

At the end of 2008, the digital radio DAB was introduced in Switzerland, which will supersede FM reception. So we were challenged again: The goal is to be able to continue to operate our historic radios in the ‘DAB and Internet age’. Since spring 2020, we now receive 6 DAB stations and convert their signal into the old ‘Telefon-Rundspruch’ format.

Mehr zum ‘Telefon-Rundspruch’ auf Wikipedia:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefonrundspruch