Telecommunications museums serve as centers for collecting, researching, organizing, documenting and displaying material related to telephone history. Their collections capture people’s imagination by appealing to their natural curiosity about phones – from Alexander Graham Bell’s original solid wood wall-mounted phone with operator direction through today’s multifunctional mobile phones.
Museums offer educational outreach workshops for both children and adults that compare modern communication technology with vintage telecommunications equipment. Their volunteers lead tours, supervise youth activity tables and catalog memorabilia; some even possess professional artifact handling or library/archives experience.
The New Hampshire Telephone Museum
The New Hampshire Telephone Museum provides visitors with an experiential history of telecom. Housed in Warner, it boasts over 1,000 artifacts from collections curated by Violette and Bartlett families who worked in telecom for 85 years, and Garry Mitchell from Connecticut who pioneered telephone work himself. Furthermore, public programs are regularly hosted at this facility.
The museum’s interactive displays offer visitors an insight into how phones have developed over time, from rotary to flip phones. There is also a large collection of novelty phones such as Princess models.
Visitors can discover the museum’s exhibits through guided or self-guided tours, with flexible hours that allow for last minute visits. For more information visit the museum website.
The Telephone Museum of Edmonton
The Edmonton Telephone Historical Information Centre is an innovative museum that explores the development of telecommunication technology over history, offering visitors a glimpse of how communication has transformed over time and appeals to technology enthusiasts as well as those looking for cultural impact analysis. Furthermore, this facility hosts multi-media presentations by an interactive robot named Xeldon who chronicles innovation history in telecommunications.
Visitors to this exhibition can try their luck using vintage rotary phones, experiment with an intricate operator switchboard, and witness how telephone technology has changed from wooden wall-mounted devices to multifunctional mobile phones with multifunctional capabilities. The collection inspires curiosity about engineering while showing how iterative design processes result in the interdependent technology we rely on today.
The Museum also provides educational outreach programs to children and youth to increase awareness of technological and societal change over time. Through its volunteer program, individuals of all ages come together to lead tours, manage youth activity tables and catalog memorabilia (many with formal artifact handling or library/archives experience). Off-site community educational events for adults are hosted as well as Traveling Trunks that bring artifacts directly into communities without their own museum.
The Antique Telephone Collectors Association
Telephone collectors are dedicated to the preservation and study of antique telephony. They collect, restore and build kits for replicating original equipment as well as compiling historical data sheets on over 375 companies since its invention – all while organizing annual shows, buy/sell/trade/wanted forums as well as sending out monthly newsletters containing phone/part ads from fellow members.
Our Telecommunications Artifact Collection incites interest in engineering by tapping into people’s natural curiosity about America’s remarkable phone history, while encouraging entrepreneurialism that spawned it. Museum volunteers play an integral part in supporting this program by leading tours, managing youth activity tables, cataloguing memorabilia (some even possess formal artifact handling or library/archives experience), leading tours or cataloguing memorabilia (including formal handling or library/archives experience for some volunteers).
The club provides an on-line Google listserv where members can communicate and exchange information, while regional shows bring together collectors from all across the United States. Furthermore, this site hosts past newsletters as well as historical data on various companies, manufacturers and distributors; also providing members a member directory to meet like-minded enthusiasts sharing an interest in old telephones.
The E.H. Danner Museum of Telephony
The E H Danner Museum of Telephony celebrates technology’s revolutionary impact on society with an extensive collection of telephones dating from early telecommunications devices up to modern smartphones.
The museum’s collections spark people’s natural interest in innovation, culture and technological change – from Alexander Graham Bell’s solid wood wall-mounted phones with operator direction to modern multifunctional smartphones. Furthermore, its collection chronicles local telephone industries through directories and personal narratives.
At its core, Fort Concho Museum provides an escape into another time, when notifications were not a daily fixture on our smartphones regarding ex-lovers or coworker wedding plans. Its telephones and switching equipment offer a welcome antidote for smartphone apocalypse while giving a glimpse into life without techno-stress. Established in 1992 by volunteers at Officers’ Quarters 4 at Fort Concho National Historic Landmark near San Angelo Texas; open to visitors year round!
