Have you ever seen the old TV sitcom My Favorite Martian?

For those who have not, it involves a Martian (Ray Walston) whose spaceship crashes on Earth – specifically in the region of Los Angeles – and is taken in by a newspaper reporter named Tim O’Hara (Bill Bixby). Tim lives in a garage apartment owned by Mrs. Laura Lee Brown (Pamela Britton), who frequently pops in unexpectedly. To give the Martian cover, Tim begins referring to him as “Uncle Martin”.

The show originally aired on CBS from 1963 to 1966.

The show frequently has Uncle Martin working with various high-tech gadgets which he uses in a vain attempt to return home to Mars. One such show features two items which radio collectors will immediately identify.

Uncle Martin always has fancy high-tech names for his fancy high-tech gadgets. In this particular episode, Portrait in Brown, one of Uncle Martin’s gadgets accidentally changes Mrs. Brown, their landlady, into a two-dimensional object – flat, like paper. The guys paste Mrs. Brown to a very large canvas and paint a country scene around her to make the canvas appear to be a life-size painting of Mrs. Brown. The painting ends up being stolen, and Uncle Martin comes up with yet another gadget – an “Atwater Kent Superheterodyne Directional Finder” – to try and find the painting. As Uncle Martin turns the horn speaker, the tone in his headphones changes, allowing him to pinpoint Mrs. Brown’s location.

In another scene, it is obvious the radio is a Radiola Superheterodyne (AR-812).

The ”Atwater Kent Superheterodyne Directional Finder” is actually a 1924 RCA Radiola Super-Heterodyne (AR-812) radio and a circa 1925 Atwater Kent model H horn speaker.

The episode is the final one of the second season (season 2, episode 38). It is currently streaming for free on Tubi TV. Here is a direct link to the episode.

“My Favorite Martian,” © 1963-1966 Jack Chertok Television Productions and the CBS Television Network. Screenshots shown above are intended as fair use under Section 107 of the USA copyright law.