I don't have a mentality of collector but rather of repairer. I like to give again a new life and sometimes, a new chance with these technical objects which were a time our companions.

So far as I remember, it is when I was approximately 7 years old that I began my first experiments on the Ducretet-Thomson family. One of that of which I remember consisted in pouring water on the bakelite case of the radio station (under operation) in order to be pleased to see it to evaporate. Later, my parents having bought a radio set with transistors, a curious thing which functioned as soon as it was switched on, I recovered the Ducretet and finished massacring it. I regretted doing that but thirty years later, A friend gave me an identical model.

The radio-set with vacuum-tubes, it is the heat, the magic of the dial and the cat which drowses on the case. It is also the witness of a certain way of life where the adults, sitted in their armchairs, an eye on the newspaper or the work and an ear directed towards the loudspeaker, more or less absent-mindedly were listening the program of the moment. One often compared the difference in access between television and the radio. In particular, the radio is a media which is not imperative. One can listen to it while making other things in same time. For the furniture, no need to position the armchairs and sofa in the same direction. One can listen to the radio within the family circle, in the literal and figurative sense.

Bordeaux, Montpellier, Radio-Lyon, Rennes-Brittany to give the name of some French transmission stations but also, Beromunster, Droitwitch, Prague, Daventry, Vatican, Algers, Tunis or, Traffic, Amateur, Postal and telecommunications authorities, etc. By looking the (generally) large dial of an antique radio set, it is possible to travel without moving, Most of these stations are mutes since for long time and that should not get better: with the development of digital radio, perhaps a day, these radios of the historical time of the wireless communications will receive nothing any more except cracklings and whistles, not capable to adapt themselves to our numerical world. This day, the lamps will be able definitively to rest.

But we are not yet there. These old radios can still charm us with theirs deep basses and theirs limited band-width. So, I continue to repair them.