California Historical Radio Society

This organization has a museum on Alameda (the island just across the bay from San Francisco) and somehow most of even my nerdiest Bay Area friends haven't heard about it.

It's SO GREAT!

It's a beautiful historic building - a 125 year old telephone exchange - and they have filled every inch of it with historic radio and television exhibits.

The deeper you go into the building (it's a lot bigger than it looks) the more you find. The basement has WWII era television sets. There's a ham radio shack with like 60 different historic sets, most of which work.

They have gramophones, and historic microphones, and an extensive library. They also have shipping containers outside because they ran out of space for their collection.

It's full of volunteers quietly tinkering with equipment who will happily tell you about it.