The museum features working equipment such as rotary phones and switchboards to demonstrate how technology has developed from Alexander Graham Bell’s early designs to multifunctional cell phones with touch screens that offer visitors a glimpse of modernity. Visitors learn about this iterative design process which has led us into today’s interdependent society.
This telephone outreach project served several functions: recruiting participants to a research registry, sharing resource lists with them and evaluating its effects on caller teams.
Educational Programs
Telecommunication museums provide an immersive history lesson of communication technology’s development from Alexander Graham Bell’s early designs through to today’s multifunctional smartphones. Museum collections preserve rare models and prototypes which demonstrate its design process while showing how these devices have profoundly transformed our interconnected lives.
HBEC staff, CAB members, and a researcher collaborated on an outreach telephone project designed to engage research registry participants during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our aim was to keep them engaged while also giving them an opportunity to express their needs more directly than during in-person group health engagement events.
HBEC callers were given access to an extensive listing of organizations and services they could recommend to research registry participants based on their expressed needs. The results of this telephone outreach program will provide valuable data that will aid future programs’ design and implementation as well as possibly assist with creating tools to facilitate research registry participation during public health emergencies.
Workshops
Preserving unique phone models and equipment ensures the history of telephone telecommunications won’t be lost to time. Historical centers feature working examples of rotary dialers, picture phones and old switchboards; linemen’s tools like stirrups for climbing poles; as well as interactive demonstrations like Carol Coursey’s dulcet tones in long distance calls simulation.
Museums encourage an interest in engineering by tapping into America’s rich telephone heritage through educational programs that compare modern telecom technology with vintage. Museums foster the entrepreneurial spirit that was the catalyst behind telephone technology development and continues to fuel it today.
Medical students who participated in telephone outreach during the COVID-19 pandemic found it an invaluable learning experience that further developed their abilities as physicians-in-training. Their positive experience further cemented telehealth’s place within future medical school curriculums.
Collections
People of all ages find the museum collection enjoyable as it brings back fond memories from days gone by, such as party line phones hanging on kitchen walls or Scobie’s store phones being common features in suburban households; also, long distance calls from college friends or relatives come flooding back.
The museum’s extensive telephone collection shows how telephone technology has progressed from solid wood wall-mounted manual system phones with operator directed lines to today’s pocket sized touch screen cellular phones, and also shows its gradual transition from an agriculturally based business into global communications giant.
The collection comprises an eclectic assortment of artifacts including wood box phones, candlestick style phones and novelty phones as well as functioning switch equipment and an extensive library of telecommunications related literature. Additionally, historic photographs and news articles from this period can also be found within. Furthermore, this collection promotes engineering education through educational programs comparing modern day telecommunications technology with vintage. Furthermore, its entrepreneurial spirit also fosters an excitement for engineering today.
Events
Telecommunication museums provide tangible history lessons about communication technology. Visitors of all ages can observe how telephone technology has advanced over time from Alexander Bell’s original invention all the way through modern smartphones. Museum collections contain rare models and prototypes that demonstrate how iterative design processes shaped our globalized world.
THG is proud to partner with several regional museums across the US in order to bring our story of telecom innovation directly to the public through their collections and outreach programs. From operator switchboards, step-by-step automatic branch exchange systems and panel systems – these museums showcase an amazing assortment of antique telephone equipment!
Tolland Historical Society offers a summer internship program for rising 7th through 12th graders. Students learn all aspects of museum operation from accessioning historic artifacts to designing displays; plus participating in Sunday events, researching local Tolland history and engaging with the public – earning community service hours and a reference letter in return!
