The gallery’s official opening will take place on Thursday, October 30, at 6:00 p.m. at II Liceum Ogólnokształcące. It is the second gallery to be established at the school on the initiative of its headmaster. In 2011, the school opened the Michał Twarda Gallery, named after the painter and longtime teacher at the school.
“The idea for another gallery was simple,” says Mirosław Sakowski. “Two years ago, I visited Bohdan Pieliński in his workshop and was fascinated by his collection and the passion with which he restored his finds. Bohdan searched for radio-technology gems and often brought items that were completely ruined back to perfect condition. After his death, his family decided to lend the extensive collection he had amassed throughout his life. The Parents’ Council at II LO purchased part of the collection, while we received part of it on deposit. We do not have everything, but we can boast nearly 30 objects. We have a gramophone from 1924, a mini gramophone and a suitcase gramophone from 1930, a spark-gap transmitter from 1898 and a magic lantern from the 1940s (the simplest projection device). They are worth seeing because all the objects are in working order,” the headmaster invites visitors to the exhibition.
Bohdan Pieliński died in September 2014. On his excellent website, RetroRadio, he ran a blog. The last entry dates from June 2014.
“Only one week remains until the broadcast from the historic SAQ transmitter. After many efforts to build a receiver, will I manage to receive this iconic transmission? After all, it is about 750 km away. Well, I remain hopeful that I will. I must admit that the subject of a high-power mechanical transmitter, designed in the 1920s, fascinates me enormously and has become almost an obsession. I studied a huge amount of information on this subject online and... I wanted to build a working model of it (at least a substitute for the concept of transmitting an electromagnetic wave into the ether using an alternator). However, after analyzing how difficult this undertaking would be, I put the idea on the ‘shelf of fantasies.’”