Why, yes, there’s a museum of televisions — why do you ask?
There’s plenty of weird stuff to be seen in Toronto — and while not the weirdest place ever, it’s certainly a unique collection. Focusing on television sets, not television programming, the history of how people watched television over the decades is on full display.
The one-room museum starts with a few examples of mechanical TV’s, which used a light source and a spinning, perforated scanning disk to create an image. A lot different from anything your grandparents might have had in their living room.
From 1930, a “televisor” — one of the first commercially available TV’s in England and Western Europe.
Called ‘the rarest TV on the planet’, this unique device made by RCA was used during the 1939 World’s Fair. The box is made with Lucite so people could see there was no trickery, and were given the opportunity to wave for their friends and family back home in front of a live camera. (Come to think of it, it’s hard to get rarer than ‘unique’!)
Call it the golden age of television design — the Space Age design perhaps helped this strange new bulky appliance find its way into more households.
Just a few more of the black-and-white variety…
From West Germany in 1957, the sail-like design combines a television, radio, and phonograph into a single unit (though I couldn’t help but wonder if you’d ever actually move the ‘sail’.
A little setup of Marilyn Monroe’s personal TV — perhaps it’s a little ironic that she was only on TV a grand total of three times. A panel shares a bit more.
And then of course there’s the original television star, one of the only nods to content or shows of any kind in the museum. The lighting of the time was too hot for humans to handle, so the folks at RCA used a papier mache cat from FAO Schwarz. His tail fell off and his head was reattached with a drumstick, but he became the subject of the first commercial TV broadcast at the World’s Fair in 1939. (He was seen again in 1991 as part of a demonstration of High Definition Television.)
If you’re looking to take a stroll down memory lane and don’t mind some fairly limited hours, this unique collection offers a fair bit to see. Aim to arrive a bit before 4pm if you’d prefer the guided version of the tour for no extra charge. The sets are rare, and it’s a great way to see how far the device has come in the last century. It’s not right in downtown Toronto, but it’s close enough that a quick streetcar ride will get you there. It’s certainly central enough to plenty of other places around Toronto.
Name: MZTV Museum of Television
Address: 64 Jefferson Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (GPS: 43.637344, -79.421397)
Directions: Take streetcars 304, 504, or 514 to King St West at Joe Shuster Way. Take a right onto Jefferson Avenue, then walk about 250 meters. Look for it on the right.
Hours: 2–5pm Tuesday-Friday, with a guided tour at 4pm
Admission: $10 CAD
Phone: 416–599–7339
Website: http://www.mztv.com
