Author: Morris Butler
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Telephone Historical Centre was established by retired telecom employees. Today, its vast archives contain some of the world’s oldest equipment from years gone by and serve to spark enthusiasm for engineering through modern and vintage telecommunications technology.

At the museum’s central office switch equipment exhibit are both working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical central office switches as well as operator switchboards, antique phones, outside plant displays including poles, wire and splicing tools and an archived telecommunications reference library.

History of the Telephone

Our Mission is to demonstrate the social and technical significance of telephone networks from 1876 until now by using working equipment as tangible evidence of an evolving technology. We recognize the inventiveness, craftsmanship, and ingenuity of telecom innovators through exhibits and educational programs.

Bell’s invention of the electric telephone heralded in a new era of communication, as did his establishment of an exchange that connected individual subscribers together so they could interact freely.

At first, many saw the telephone as the work of some mad scientist or wizard. Over time however, it became an indispensable part of daily life, outgrowing its initial ridicule and becoming part of our everyday routines. Today we take it for granted yet its development took years of hard work to perfect.

Exhibits

The Telephone Historical Centre showcases working equipment from different eras. Ranging from Antonio Meucci’s early box-shaped phone to more contemporary designs, this museum displays an evolution in communications innovation.

At Jefferson Barracks Park Telephone Building, this museum houses one of the world’s premier collections of telephone and switchboard equipment, such as working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical central office step switches; antique phones; operator switches; outdoor plant displays featuring poles cables and tools; an extensive telecommunications reference library and knowledgeable volunteers from Southwestern Bell or AT&T who volunteer their services and knowledge as volunteers.

From wooden wall phones and rotary dialers, to replicas of small town American independent telephone exchanges with glass insulators, the museum boasts an incredible range of hands-on telephone technology sure to amaze all visitors. Additionally, there are interesting objects that can serve as teaching tools; for instance, old office telephone computer machines provide a glimpse into communication technology’s development over time as it was integrated into telecom systems over time.

Education Programs

Students attending classes via telephone save both money and travel costs while opening themselves up to new forms of learning. Started in 1955 by Staten Island resident Antonio Meucci, this Smithsonian-affiliated project has now become part of our nation’s educational landscape.

Edmonton, Alberta ED TEL’s museum boasts antique phones as well as an intricate panel switchboard so visitors can experience technology first-hand. Accredited by Museums Alberta, this facility is run by retired ED TEL employees.

Visitors can test crank phones, discover classic rotary dial phones and explore antique line insulators at this museum. Plus they can join a workshop that promotes engineering by tapping into America’s rich history of phone innovation! Tours for schools and groups are available either during regular hours or by appointment (call for info / reservations). In addition, outreach workshops help teach children how to think like engineers by showing them how to solve problems using creativity, engineering principles and technology.

Volunteer Opportunities

Volunteers are an integral part of our community and are recognized annually at an appreciation event for their service. While time commitment may be significant, the rewards can be great; with so many ways to engage at Green-Wood we hope that one is waiting just for you – something which allows your unique skills and interests to flourish!

Volunteers participating in our Guided Tour Program welcome visitors and guide them through exhibition galleries at each of the five historic house museums, providing tours from Fridays through Sundays with training provided as necessary. These shifts run for four hours on each Friday through Sunday.

Telephony Museum Volunteers engage with its vast collection of memorabilia to demonstrate how telecom technologies have developed from Alexander Graham Bell’s wooden wall-mounted telephones through modern mobile phones. Volunteers may explore working panel and crossbar electromechanical central office type switching systems, reconstructed private automatic branch exchange exhibits, candlestick wall phones and antique line insulators – among others – within our museum’s walls.

Information Desk Volunteers of Anne Frank The Exhibition provide our visitor groups with warm greetings at our information desk, actively dispensing museum and partner information and answering inquiries about exhibits, programs and tours.

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Edmonton’s Telephone Historical Centre serves as an international repository of global telecommunication history, offering acquisition, research, documentation and exhibition of global telecom history. Explore their collection to witness how telecommunication technology has advanced from solid wood wall-mounted phones with operator direction through to today’s sleek cell phones.

This section details a telephone outreach project designed to engage older adults during the Covid-19 pandemic and identify resources for specific challenges they faced. It shares key results and lessons learned, with hopes that project replication is possible.

Educational Workshops

The Museum’s educational workshops foster enthusiasm for engineering by drawing upon America’s rich telephone history to compare modern telecommunications with vintage tech. These programs cultivate the inherent curiosity that led to the invention of telephone and that continues to propel inventors and innovators.

Visitors experience the history of communication as they experiment with classic rotary phones and an intricate panel switchboard, witnessing technology advance from Alexander Graham Bell’s wooden wall-mounted devices to sleek mobile phones. Furthermore, guests experience what life was like for early phone switchboard operators by operating reconstructed private automatic branch exchange exhibits.

Students can explore the inner workings of old analog telephones to gain an understanding of the intricate components which convert voice into electrical current and back again – this shows the iterative design process which produced our world of interdependency.

Traveling Trunks

Traveling Trunks bring part of the Museum’s collection directly into classrooms. Each trunk contains artifacts, hands-on activities, primary source learning materials and suggested lesson plans from its contents.

The Caddo Traveling Trunk gives students an in-depth overview of Caddo Indian life in East Texas – their religion, food, housing, language and artistry as well as briefly covering mission system established by Spain during their colonization efforts.

The Civil War Trunk offers students a comprehensive view of American Civil War. This trunk provides information about slavery, soldier experiences, new technology introduced during and after the conflict as well as social reforms after it. Furthermore, this trunk features reproduction period clothing, soldiers haversacks with hygiene items and utensils as well as books featuring period photographs and illustrations.

Exhibits

Museum collections commemorating Alexander Graham Bell’s revolutionary phone are testament to its fascinating history, while paying homage to generations of men and women who built poles, laid wires underground, designed and managed the technology that connects us all.

Edmonton’s Telephone Historical Centre showcases an expansive collection of antique telephones and related equipment from different time periods. Operated by Telecom Pioneers – a volunteer organization made up of current and retired Bell System employees – this museum provides an intriguing glimpse at the development of telecommunications over time. Displays include wooden wall phones, classic rotary phones and candlestick phones; manual cord boards featuring step-by-step private automatic branch exchanges to illustrate step switch principles; as well as antique line insulators and panels from this fascinating era of history.

The museum’s telecommunications collection also includes replicas of Alexander Graham Bell’s Gallows Frame Phone, Thomas A. Watson’s Thumper Phone, and the first phone imported into Edmonton by Dominion Telegraph Agent Alexander Taylor. Displays chronicle Edmonton’s telephone industry through directories and photographs while also showing early telephone technologies.

Events

The Museum is an opportunity for discovery, engagement, and education surrounding the telephone. Its collection shows how its invention spawned other innovations and businesses, shaping lives across society and telling its own story as it did so. Furthermore, it depicts those tasked with maintaining and expanding a national telephone wire network across their respective states.

Telecom museums often host educational workshops aligning with school curriculum requirements. They may also organize off-site community educational events for adults. Some even host Traveling Trunk programs to bring artifacts directly into communities that cannot visit the museum itself.

Edmonton’s Telephone Historical Centre provided an informative look back into Alberta telecommunications history, dedicated to collecting, researching, organizing, documenting, exhibiting and storing materials related to phone telephony. First opened on December 3, 1987 in Old Strathcona’s historic telephone building before moving to Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre in 2004. Exhibits at both locations included Alexander Graham Bell’s original gallows frame and candlestick phones as well as wooden wall phones, working manual switchboards including step-by-step private automatic branch exchanges which illustrated stepper principles as well as antique phones with colorful insulatorss attached.

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No matter your interest – telecoms, history or memorabilia – this collection will hold something for you. It pays tribute to generations of individuals who helped shape telephony through its creation; from installing poles and burying cables, to designing and managing its technology.

This collection comprises wooden wall phones, candlestick phones and classic rotary dial telephones crafted of wood or candle wax; an operator switchboard; as well as two position Kellogg universal telephone exchange. Also included are line maps and directories.

History of Telecommunications

This collection covers the evolution of telecommunications from manual switching to automated systems and honors generations of men and women who erected poles, buried cables, designed and managed telecommunication technology and installed telephone sets into users’ homes and offices. Visitors can experience history first hand through interactive exhibits allowing them to touch, hold and operate equipment from various eras of telecommunications – recently we introduced QR codes at some exhibits which enable visitors to use smart phones to gain additional information about items on display.

Telephone Historical Centre collections show the immense possibilities created by Alexander Graham Bell’s invention for humanity. Telecommunications allows us to stay in contact with each other while exchanging valuable information such as weather reports, traffic updates and stock market updates. The museum features a diverse collection of telephones ranging from wooden wall phones and novelty models, through rotary dials, operator switchboards and complete two position Kellogg universal telephone exchanges. It also shows the evolution of mobile telephones from 1970’s car phones through modern cellular technology, offering visitors a unique viewing experience. Operated by Telephone Historical Centre Collections – an award-winning non-profit comprising active and retired telecom employees – the museum makes for a fun visit!

Telephones

No matter your background in communications technology or interest in communications itself, this collection offers something for everyone. Ranging from early telephones to the latest mobile phones and more modern models such as tablets or virtual reality phones – each piece showcases generations of hardworking telco workers who built poles, laid cables and designed and managed the technologies that made telecommunications possible.

Visitors to this museum will see working panel and crossbar electromechanical central office type switching systems, an impressive collection of rotary, candlestick and wooden wall-mount telephones from 1900 through today (including Princess Phones), novelty phones (such as Princess Phones), as well as numerous novelty phones such as Princess Phones. A large collection of red telephone boxes reminiscent of those seen along Britain’s roadsides since 1920 is also on view here.

This museum provides a working, self-guided exhibition on the history of communication technology. It includes working equipment such as a complete Strowger Exchange, 1920s switchboard, rotary dial phones and red telephone kiosks from BT’s last rollout – as well as its red kiosk collection from last rollout! Founded by Western Electric retiree Don Capehart and Rita Capehart (both Western Electric retirees), volunteers staff the museum; visitors can try their hand at being 1920s rotary dial operators or learn about its development from Alexander Graham Bell’s “Mr Watson, come here!” call to videophones! In addition, guided tours and educational programs can also be offered.

Switchboards

The museum provides visitors with an interactive experience of telephone technology’s history and its impact on society, through hands-on models and exhibits that illustrate its workings, as well as those responsible for its creation, development and maintenance.

This collection includes several operating operator switchboards which display how the system worked during its heyday, along with numerous reconstructed back-end systems and manual exchange buildings. A range of wall phones from early hand crank magneto phones to modern mobile smartphones are also on display as well as an extensive library that showcases one-of-a-kind telecom publications.

This museum could have easily turned into an inaccessible collection, appealing only to retired telephone technicians and their children, but instead has achieved something quite remarkable: entertaining without being silly, informative without becoming dull, surprising while remaining familiar.

Starting off as an initiative from retired employees of Edmonton D TEL, the Museum opened for business on December 3, 1987 in Old Strathcona neighborhood in Edmonton. Over time it relocated to its current home at Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre in central Edmonton where it now operates as the oldest comprehensive telephone museum West of Mississippi with backend and operator switchboards dating from 1901 through 1970 in its collection.

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The Telephone Historical Centre houses an outstanding selection of antique telephones and telecommunications technology, as well as an expansive research archive featuring microfilm copies of early directories as well as at-risk scrapbooks and binders.

These records document the progression of communications technology from Alexander Graham Bell’s Gallows Frame and Thomas Watson’s Thumper Phone through modern wireless technology.

Collections

The Alexander Graham Bell Collection includes photographs, equipment and artifacts dating from its first factory in Brantford in 1878 to the Bell-Northern Research and Development Laboratories today. In addition to these documents spanning telephone manufacturing from their beginning in Brantford in 1878 through its modern production at Bell-Northern Research and Development Laboratories today; as well as comprehensive files on the Trans-Canada Telephone System, Bell Canada as well as independent Canadian telephone companies including independent/connecting telephone services within Canada as well as foreign telecommunications systems worldwide; including correspondence written by Alexander Graham Bell himself, 1915 book of sketches showing construction of first transcontinental line to tape recordings featuring Thomas Watson commenting on working alongside inventor Thomas Watson as well as customer opinions about this new device from its customers themselves.

The Museum houses one of the largest collections of antique telephones and related telecommunications equipment in North America, ranging from wooden box phones and candlestick phones to classic rotary phones and novelty phones – not forgetting our working central office switchboard with operator panel and crossbar electromechanical switching – this collection provides a fascinating window into communication history.

Exhibits

The museum offers an engaging look back into the development of telephone technology with their collection of antique telecommunication equipment and items, such as replicas of Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone to videophones; showing all their technological progress over more than 100 years.

The telephone is one of the greatest inventions ever. It revolutionised our way of communicating, as well as social interactions among humans. From new forms of etiquette to aiding deaf individuals communicate more easily – the telephone has become an indispensable part of modern living.

The museum features an eclectic array of artifacts such as wooden box and candlestick phones, operator switchboards, working panel and crossbar electromechanical switching systems central office type switching systems from World War I through Gulf War, hundreds of telephone related trinkets and an extensive library of telephony books and catalogs; these items can all be found within an iconic phone building that has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Events

Telecommunication museums provide living galleries of history; their collections enable both students and adults to comprehend how technology evolves over time. Museum-based learning resources often showcase working telecommunications equipment that showcases its iterative design processes that have led us to our current world of interdependent communications technologies.

From Alexander Graham Bell’s solid wood wall-mounted phones that required operator direction to the sleek mobile devices of today, visiting telephone museum collections can make for an entertaining family outing or school field trip experience. Roseville Telephone Museum boasts one of the largest collections of antique telephones in North America.

Gridley Museum of Independent Telephony in Illinois was established by active and retired telecom professionals with a passion for preserving independent telephone history in their community. This innovative museum boasts an innovative Step-by-Step Private Automatic Branch Exchange exhibit as well as plant displays featuring poles cables splicing tools and antique line insulators from poles cables splicing tools to antique line insulators; additional items in their collection include two position Kellogg universal switchboards as well as candlestick wall telephones.

Membership

Register as a member now to support one of North America’s premier telecommunications museums! Members receive biweekly emails providing updates from across the history discipline and may qualify for up to five grant-in-aid programs each year to further their research projects.

Our extensive archives contain more than three and a half million paper documents and 25,000 pieces of equipment, which trace telecommunications development from manual system telephones operated by switchboard operators to today’s wireless communication technologies.

The Museum operates entirely independently, supported by membership fees, donations and grants from both members and donors. We have received four stars from Charity Navigator so you can trust that your membership dollar is being wisely spent. Plus you’ll gain discounted admission and gift shop purchases. Plus there’s The History Teacher magazine subscription plus access to over 1,500 humanities and social science journals on JSTOR archives!

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Learn the advancements in telephone technology since Alexander Graham Bell revolutionized communication in 1876! This interactive museum makes for a thrilling family outing, school field trip or group sightseeing tour!

It features working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical central office step switches, antique phones, operator switchboards and outdoor plant displays with poles cables splicing equipment tools – plus a cataloged telecommunications reference library!

Museum Hours

The Telephone Historical Centre brings iconic moments in telecom history to life, from wooden wall phones and rotary dials to the smartphones that make our lives more connected – this museum is an absolute must for history enthusiasts and tech enthusiasts alike!

This hands-on museum, first established on December 3, 1987 in Edmonton’s Old Strathcona neighborhood and relocated two years later for greater accessibility to Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre, ranks among the largest of its kind in North America. Among its exhibits are working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical central office switches as well as operator switchboards; antique phones; outdoor plant displays with poles, cables, splicing tools and equipment; an extensive cataloged telecommunications reference library and much more!

Visitors to the museum have the option of exploring independently or taking guided tours led by knowledgeable docents. Educational programs, including Traveling Trunks Program and free parking with ADA compliant facilities are also offered.

Museum Exhibits

Modern phone calling seems almost magical – push a button, and instantly your mom in Philadelphia or BFF in New York are connected with you instantly. But it wasn’t always this seamless; this museum takes visitors back in time with its vintage wires and cords.

This museum boasts one of the world’s largest collections of antique phones. Operated by active and retired telecommunications employees through Telecom Pioneers – a non-profit 501(c)(3) Bell System employee service organization – it features wooden box phones, candlestick phones and classic rotary phones as well as working Panel and Crossbar Electromechanical Central Office Switches; Operator Switchboards and an Outdoor Plant Exhibit including poles, cables and splicing equipment.

This self-guided history museum provides an immersive learning experience on the development of telecommunications technology from Alexander Graham Bell’s workshop through modern models. Relics displayed will leave visitors stunned at how advanced and sophisticated they once were to operate.

Gift Shop

Today we take for granted what was once cutting-edge technology: phones. At Canada’s only museum of its kind devoted exclusively to phones – The Telephone Historical Centre – there’s an extensive collection of phones from its inception up until modern times on display, perfect for phone enthusiasts and families. There are also educational programs offered regularly for children and school students at this special spot.

Established by retired telecom employees in Roseville, this museum boasts one of the finest collections of vintage telephone equipment in North America. Among them is working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical central office switch equipment; working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical central office switchboards; outside plant displays featuring poles wires and splicing tools as well as an impressive reference library dedicated to telecom. Opened as a non-profit institution by retired telecommunications employees in 2007, the Museum also serves as an eye-opener into telecom history, by juxtaposing modern telecommunications technology with equipment from days gone by combining modern telecommunications technology alongside vintage equipment from days gone by.

Contact Us

The Telephone Historical Centre is a fascinating hands-on museum where visitors can view, hear and touch an impressive variety of antique telephones and equipment dating back to 1885. One of the largest of its kind in North America, this unique venue provides an engaging way to understand how communication technology has developed over time. Perfect as family fun day trip destination or group sight-seeing tour stop for both locals and travelers from abroad alike!

Museum admission is always free. Guided tours for groups of ten or more are offered daily; to book one simply select your date and time below before clicking “Reserve.” Please keep in mind that tour reservations are subject to availability; tour slots per day are limited so we suggest making your reservations as early as possible.

All rights are reserved by Telephone Historic Center

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