A big thanks to Adafruit Kitting’s own Kevin Crystal for writing in about an old downtown neighborhood that holds a fascinating, some would even say glamorous, place in New York City’s history of manufacturing: Radio Row. A segment on Radio Row aired on NPR back in 2002. The segment’s page links to Sonic Memorial, where you can hear marvelous audio clips of Radio Row that date back to the 1920s.
Part of what Adafruit loves about being based in New York is the city’s rich history. It’s exciting to find out that a piece of our manufacturing/electronics legacy was located only a stone’s throw from both our current and former locations.
When City Radio opened on New York City’s Cortlandt Street in 1921, radio was a novelty. Over the next few decades, hundreds of stores popped up in the neighborhood: Metro Radio, Blan the Radio Man, Leotone Radio, Cantor the Cabinet King.
The six-square-block area in lower Manhattan became a bazaar of tubes, knobs, hi-fi equipment and antenna kits. It was the largest collection of radio and electronics stores in the world.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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