I started research in superconductivity as a postdoc with Ted Geballe at Stanford in 1967 after completing my PhD thesis on a totally unrelated topic, some novel optical properties of antiferromagnetic insulators. Ted’s infectious interest in exotic superconducting materials soon came to dominate my research interests as well. In this talk I will review the highlights—and a few lowlights—of my many years of basic experimental research on superconducting materials at Stanford, IBM San Jose/Almaden and the University of Maryland. And, my view of the impact of this research. Much of this research was done before you (the audience) finished your undergraduate educations. I will discuss how much our understanding of superconducting materials has changed during this time, and yet how much is the same (e.g., we still don’t have a useful room temperature superconductor and we still don’t understand the cuprates!!). In listening to this historical story you should try to imagine where the “hot” superconductivity topics of this M2S conference might go in the next 60 years.