The Museum of Radio and Technology

If viewing the original Star Wars movie on LaserDisc, playing the iconic NBC chimes on a xylophone or watching guides demonstrate the impressive sound quality of a 1915 phonograph cylinder sounds like your thing, the hands-on and interactive Museum of Radio and Technology in Huntington, West Virginia, is waiting. 

The 3,000 objects in the collection here include vintage radios, televisions, telephones, computers, telegraph equipment and record players. Visitors can also find more eclectic items such as a tabletop hearing aid and dangerous toys from the past, like an atomic energy lab, though that is kept safely behind glass.  

A nonprofit organization founded the museum in 1991, and it is located in a 10,000-square-foot former school dating to the 1920s. Although the attraction does have a focus on local and regional broadcast memorabilia, artifacts of national fame can be found here, too, like a 1927 RCA Radiola from the Wrigley family home in Chicago. The pride of the museum is the only remaining TV camera from the 1939 New York World’s Fair. 

Licensed amateur radio operators can work and play in the state-of-the-art listening shack, and the museum offers summer STEM camps and Christmas programs for kids. Museum volunteers teach classes on the basics of electronics and host swap meets and auctions three times a year.

Attributing much of its massive collection to donations, the museum is increasingly becoming a place filmmakers turn to when looking to find old radio and TV props. (Items from the museum’s collection appeared in director Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”)

The museum is open only on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. and is free to visit although donations are welcome. 1640 Florence Ave., Huntington, West Virginia 25701, 304/525-8890, mrtwv.org