At this remarkable museum, artifacts from Edmonton’s telephone history can be found. Additionally, its archives contain rare volumes like Alexander Graham Bell’s explanation of its invention which was published a mere year after its debut.
Hello Montreal! is an interactive exhibition designed to foster interest in engineering through comparison of modern telecommunications to vintage tech.
Museum of Independent Telephony
A hands-on museum dedicated to telecommunications history. This museum honors those whose creativity made communication innovation possible from Alexander Graham Bell’s invention to modern day flip phones.
Visitors can step into the shoes of linemen by operating their own rotary telephone, solving mysteries with clues provided by museum staff, or experiencing traditional wooden phone booths, magneto switchboards and antique line insulators from different eras.
This museum honors the vibrant independent telephony world that emerged following Alexander Graham Bell’s patents being expired, when nearly 6,000 independent telephone companies emerged to challenge Bell System’s dominance of the market. Nearly all were founded after its presence faded away, including one local one that later joined Sprint; accredited with Museums Alberta for guided and group tours available by prior appointment only; open from March through December with free admission but donations accepted as donations are encouraged.
The Virtual Museum of Telecommunications
Explore a breathtaking collection that spans the history and evolution of communication technology – from the first telegraph to today’s smartphones! Most items and equipment remain operational. Become an operator or dial a rotary telephone to experience history’s most iconic piece of tech as it was created and maintained over generations by men and women around the globe.
Archives also feature extensive resources in speech and hearing research, telecommunications engineering and telephony design. Additional special collections include a manual switchboard from Dominion Telegraph Agent Alexander Taylor as well as an exhibit that chronicles the development of mobile phones from 1980s car phones to current cellular technology.
In 1997, British Telecom closed their archives, creating the need to preserve a significant collection of industrial artefacts that comprised its archives. A web portal houses rich content on these artifacts; many can now be seen at Connected Earth museum galleries and exhibitions hosted by museum network partners.
The Telephone Workshops
The Telephone Historical Centre provides hands-on science, history and art learning experiences designed to inspire children and young teens towards a career in engineering. Their scalable engineering style program uses items from their unique collection of telephone items to engage participants and expand their understanding of electric theory, engineering principles, historical telephone advancements as well as self-efficacy improvements over time. Their longitudinal evaluation measures improvements in participants’ interest, mathematics knowledge and self-efficacy.
The Edmonton Museum features an extensive collection of tools used by your ancestors, crank wall phones and decorator phones that help visitors explore how people communicated during Edmonton’s early telephone era. Furthermore, visitors will discover other forms of communication such as an operator switchboard, step-by-step private automatic branch exchange and mobile phone displays that span from 1980s car phones to today’s cell phones.
The Museum’s archives house many unique original volumes such as 1877’s “The Telephone: An Account of Electricity, Magnetism and Sound”. Published just one year after Bell created his revolutionary invention of telephone communication, this book provided detailed diagrams on how to build your own speaking telephone!
The Collection
From Brantford’s initial telephone factory to modern research laboratories, this collection contains documents, photographs and equipment documenting phone manufacturing from start to finish. Furthermore, it includes extensive files on Trans-Canada Telephone System, Bell Canada as well as independent phone companies and foreign telecommunications providers.
This collection provides the means for inspiring a love of engineering by drawing from America’s impressive telephone history and showing how modern day technologies compare with vintage equipment from years past. It’s truly an inspiring tale of ingenuity and entrepreneurialism!
The Collection features an assortment of telecom artifacts, from antique rotary dial phones and manual switchboards, to interactive stations where visitors can experience operating early 20th century phones such as hand-crank magneto phones, rotary dial phones, and manual switchboards – bringing Edmonton’s telephone history alive! Additionally, the Collection houses an archive of Edmonton telephone directories as well as technical books covering this topic.
