It's not in a place you're likely to be anytime soon, but if you happen to find yourself in Alameda, California, you might want to head down to the Bay Area Radio & TV Museum Hall of Fame, which traces the history of radio and broadcasting back 120 years. 

But even if you never go, there are several stories at the link below that are worth the read. One is about only two surviving machines that played the NBC chimes, musical notes the network still uses to this day. The story of how it was played hundreds of thousands of times over the decades is something I never knew. 

And then there's the not-so-tall tale of how a local reporter tried to interview the Beatles, with only some degree of success.

“I showed up at the appointed time, which I remember was somewhere around 3 p.m., and all four were in their underwear lounging around...John and Ringo didn’t want to do the interview, but happily Paul and George did. John was so annoyed, he went into the bathroom and flushed the toilet continuously, attempting to foil the sound. I was using a recorder that was unidirectional and blocked out peripheral sound, so it foiled his efforts, as you can tell by the quality of the recording.”

But you don't have to be in the Golden State to appreciate what's on display. The Museum has a web page featuring a history of jingles used on some California stations, including legends like KFRC and KYA. You can hear them here. 

I suppose the closest thing we have in Canada is the MZTV Museum of Television, a wonderful resource run by Moses Znaimer. But I wish we had a real Broadcasting Museum in Toronto, that could trace our own radio history back a century. That would be a fascinating place to visit. 

The history of radio is thriving in this fascinating, hidden Bay Area museum