If you know me, you know that this is exactly the kind of thing that excites so many of my interests—television, once new but deprecated technology, some history, and, yes, the airport location. When I used to travel through here more often when I was younger, the museum had some pretty bland exhibits. I can’t even remember any of them, except for a sports-related one around football season, that were as exciting as the current exhibit.

I spent about an hour going through all of the hardware, and I snapped a lot of photos. Some of the my favorite pieces were the various TV-radio combinations. I like the idea of all-in-one devices, and one was designed to have programmed all of the New York City radio and television stations that you could press a button and it would automatically tune to that station. “It just works.”

The portable television sets were also novel since portability in the 1960s was remarkably advanced fifty years ago. Some of those sets were as small as 4-inches in size, which isn’t much bigger than a current smartphone screen.

If you’re at SFO and have a layover (or, more likely, a delay) stop by Terminal 3 and have a look, or just look at my photo album.

A few weeks ago, while trying to find clips of old radio variety shows, I found an episode of the Royal Gelatin Hour, featuring multi-talented entertainer Rudy Vallee, who interviews a young girl from Brooklyn and tries to understand soft-ball.

Some highlights include Vallee not understanding how softball is supposed to be played, that the ball can be pitched fast from an underhanded delivery, and that companies sponsor teams. He also doesn’t understand why the girl wouldn’t stop playing ball in favor of chasing boys. Oh that Vallee! The reference to the Connecticut Yankees refers to Vallee’s own band, which evidently have their own team.

You can listen to the entire episode on the wonderful Internet Archive.

Pledge generously and support this extraordinary stalwart of freeform radio. We need more of these autonomous, listener-supported radio stations.

Hurry up, though. The marathon ends on Sunday.