Telecommunications history centers offer working equipment such as rotary dial phones and switchboards to show visitors. Workshops or guided tours may be offered so visitors of all ages can gain a better understanding of communication technology’s evolution.
Historical centres preserve artifacts that reveal the iterative design process behind today’s interdependent world, along with advertisements, photos and personal narratives.
Educating the Future
Telephone museums provide tangible history lessons to their visitors about the development of communications technology. Visitors can explore early models and prototypes that ultimately led to today’s popular telecom devices.
From wooden, wall-mounted telephones that were hand-cranked by operators in the past to pocket-sized touch screen cell phones that are used by today’s students, there is much to discover through Telephone Historical Centre Outreach Programs. When educators take advantage of them they ignite sparks of curiosity among their pupils while inspiring them to seek knowledge in all its forms.
Museum volunteers may include former or current employees of telecom companies who can draw upon firsthand knowledge of the equipment on display, which allows them to tell engaging stories of innovation, culture and technological change – perfect for family outings, school field trips and group sight-seeing tours! Furthermore, their presence makes these museums accessible to a wider audience than would otherwise be possible.
Engaging the Past
Telephone Historical Centres not only preserve physical telephones, but they also chronicle its history through memorabilia collections. For instance, Roseville Telephone Museum showcases an impressive assortment of antique phones and equipment dating back over one hundred years of communication technology in both its local community and globally.
The museum exhibits enable children and adults to gain an appreciation of how the telephone has advanced from wooden wall-mounted phones with hand cranks to portable, touch screen smartphones used today – developments which have changed societies by increasing connectivity between individuals and nations worldwide.
Telephone museums frequently house archives that document the local history of telecommunications such as directories, photographs and personal narratives that provide researchers with an in-depth understanding of its development. Such resources also foster greater appreciation of its arduous journey that led to this groundbreaking invention – it transformed lives across communities while remaining an indispensable tool in our everyday lives.
Preserving the Past
Historical centers provide an invaluable service in their preservation of telephone artifacts and records. By documenting technological evolution from Alexander Graham Bell’s early designs through to today’s multifunctional smartphones, historical centers provide a window into how this invention has profoundly reshaped society.
Archival staff and preservation programs devise annual and long-term preservation plans by conducting risk analyses and surveys to ascertain any necessary preservation needs. Rehousing or reboxing records; using treatments to humidify or flatten tightly rolled documents; and copying onto microfilm or digital media can all reduce handling. This HBEC program utilized both staff experience with older adults as well as expertise provided by MCUAAAR leaders, CAB members, and other university partners in creating its survey and caller orientation materials. These resources enabled HBEC callers to recommend specific services based on respondents’ expressed needs during a pandemic, and ensured follow-up calls and debriefing sessions that kept participants engaged while also helping meet identified needs.
Celebrating the Past
As our world becomes ever more connected, telephone technology continues to develop. Preserving unique telephone models, telegraph machines, and related telecommunications equipment ensures that history of this pioneering invention can be preserved.
These historical centers exhibit fully functional pieces of working telecommunications technology to illustrate its social and technological importance. Visitors can see rotary dialers, picture phones and old switchboards; linemen’s tools like stirrups for climbing poles can be observed; there is even an interactive long distance call simulation with Carol Coursey, an ex-long distance operator renowned for her dulcet tones.
The Telecommunications History Group (THG), a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization, runs museums and maintains one of the world’s largest telecom archives. By engaging the public in its tangible history of telecom, we celebrate creativity, craftsmanship and ingenuity that contributed to modern-day connectivity. THG also hosts outreach programs to preserve and interpret past for future generations.
