The museum explores the inventions and innovations that have contributed to our communication network today, from Alexander Graham Bell’s attic workshop all the way up to modern mobile phones.
The Telephone Historical Centre offers both discovery and entertainment, featuring working panel and crossbar electromechanical central office switches, lineman poles, cables and splicing equipment as well as an extensive cataloged reference library.
Educational Programs
Our museum houses a tangible history of telecom that can be explored either with guided or self-guided tours. Our collection comprises artifacts belonging to Violette & Bartlett families as well as collectors who worked in the telephone industry over time.
Our workshops foster enthusiasm for engineering by drawing inspiration from America’s fascinating telephone history. By employing electric theory, mathematics, and screw drivers to compare modern day semiconductor architecture with that of historic artifacts from telephone history, students gain an appreciation of what inspired its creation – an intrinsic curiosity which still drives today’s inventors and engineers.
Youngsters experience what it was like to attend an 1850s one-room schoolhouse using period desks, study books and writing slates from this customized program presented as either a lesson or activity for grades 4th-8th. For added pre-knowledge this can also be combined with Interactive Virtual Learning on The Battle of Ridgefield.
Workshops
Our Telephone Workshops engage students in an engineering activity designed to foster enthusiasm for electric theory and engineering by drawing upon America’s rich telephone history. By comparing contemporary semiconductor architecture with vintage tech, these workshops foster an abundance of curiosity that fuelled its groundbreaking invention as well as inspiring today’s innovators and inventors.
The museum’s collections span from Alexander Graham Bell’s attic workshop to modern mobile phones. Exhibits include working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical central office switches, antique phones and switchboards, outdoor plant displays with poles, cables and splicing tools as well as a cataloged reference library of telephone related materials.
Skilled docents (both current and retired Bell employees) lead visitors around exhibits with enthusiasm and expertise, making this museum one of the few where visitors can touch and operate telephone equipment! Established by retired ED TEL employees in December 1987 in Old Strathcona and relocated in 2004, The Telephone Historical Centre’s mission is to collect, research, organize, document, exhibit, store and exhibit historical materials related to global telecommunications development both locally and worldwide.
Tours
Telecommunications History Group members are collectors and history enthusiasts dedicated to preserving the technology behind telephone industry. We provide an unprecedented opportunity to view telephones in their original settings; you’ll see their evolution from solid wood wall mounted operator directed devices all the way up to pocket sized cellular phones!
Explore the exciting history of telecommunications at one of Edmonton’s most engaging attractions: this museum. Accredited by Museums Alberta, it showcases hands-on exhibits that demonstrate communications principles, an exceptional multi-media Historical Telecommunication Theatre show experience, as well as an expansive collection of telephones and equipment.
This working museum makes for a fantastic family outing, school field trip or sight seeing tour. Visitors will discover antique phones, manual switchboards and original phone booths alongside fully operational panel and crossbar electromechanical central office switches, operator switchboards and outside plant displays including poles, cables splicing tools and equipment.
Special Events
The Museum provides a captivating journey back in history through its collection of antique telephones and switchboards, set against vibrant painted backdrops. Two switchboards (one from Plain’s last step-by-step private automatic branch exchange system and another from its panel system), antique line insulators, novelty phones, novelty phone cases and various forms of telecom equipment can be seen displayed here.
Exhibits provide visitors with an exciting peek back through more than 100 years of communications technology history in Roseville and nationwide. Skilled Museum docents – both current and retired Bell employees – enthusiastically guide visitors around exhibits to bring history alive!
The Museum’s collection also demonstrates how people celebrated holidays throughout time through images and objects that can be viewed or handled, with special hands-on Holiday programs offering more interactive experiences.
