Archives Over the Air

The WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA) ensures the long-term preservation and access to WGBH’s vast archive of programming and original materials made available through the Open Vault. Olin College of Engineering identifies unique institutional collaborations that enable new educational experiences that have lasting benefit for everyone.

Working together, Olin Students have brought to life a corner of the WGBH archive in their original form.

We’ve designed and built a low-power broadcast system to transmit classic content to vintage, analog television sets over the air. This provides a novel, warm, authentic means to consume historic media from history. Archives Over the Air serves to:

• Highlight the rich history of broadcast by institutions in the Boston area
• Create an interactive, inter-generational touchpoint for families
• Illustrate the character of the technology from yesterday and today
• Create custom content that plays with the unique characteristics of the medium

Where We’ve Been

In October 2018, we setup our Archives Over the Air installation at the WGBH Alumni Reunion event as a way of testing our technical setup. Footage from the event, with our setup in action, is shown below.

Where We’re Going

We’re just at the beginning of this project! We’re interested in collaborating with local Boston institutions to bring modern audiences the original programming that was created not far from where they stand. How can we get started in co-creating a new instance of Archives Over the Air? Together we curate an interactive, public exhibit that shares your holdings in new (old) ways.

The Current Installation

Archives Over the Air installation is an interactive electronic exhibit, highlighting both content and physical interaction with vintage television sets. Visitors can view the broadcast content, change the channels to find new content, or adjust the antenna for better reception. This is the full TV experience.

Broadcast: A single, central broadcast “tower,” is capable of displaying digital media on up to six channels at once. A passive antenna provides a signal range of ~20 feet.

Reception: The signal can be received by any television set in range that is capable of receiving an analog signal, with no limitation on the number of sets. Currently, we have 3 television sets:

• A 1970’s Sony Trinitron, Color
• A 1980’s Sears, Black & White
• A 1980’s RCA hand-held, Color