Today, using a telephone to call someone may seem effortless: just one push of a button and you can be conversing with your mother in Philadelphia or best friend in Florida – yet getting there has been far from effortless.
This special issue’s papers aim to broaden our understanding of telephone culture by moving beyond nation-state-based frameworks and exploring technologies more in terms of telephone culture.
The History of the Telephone
Discover the people, technology and stories that made Edmonton’s telephone industry successful at this one-of-a-kind museum. Exhibits include vintage telephone directories and technical manuals.
Antonio Meucci and Charles Bourseul are often credited with developing phone-like devices in 1849 and 1854 respectively, but Alexander Graham Bell secured the patent for a functional telephone in 1876.
The invention of the telephone revolutionized lives worldwide, yet was controversial at times. For instance, early phone users expressed great concerns over privacy. Public phones posed a risk as anyone listening in on your conversations could potentially hear what you were discussing; hence early users preferred using phones at businesses in order to maintain confidentiality of conversations. Alexander Graham Bell himself was an innovator renowned for working closely with Helen Keller in developing techniques to teach speech to the deaf as well as co-founding Science magazine before his death in 1922.
The Archives
The Telephone Historical Centre’s archives offer historians, researchers, and others interested in the history of telecommunications an incredible wealth of resources to delve into. Their wide-ranging collection includes vintage telephone directories from 1800s to present*; technical manuals; and numerous books of interest.
Ellsworth’s Telephone Museum stands out from traditional museums by inviting its visitors to interact with its objects by using crank phones found throughout, sitting down at an original back-end switchboard from 1901, or operating it themselves for an afternoon! Open every Sunday afternoon, run entirely by volunteers.
The Archival Collection is divided into three subseries. Series VII: Materials Produced by SNET includes clippings and scrapbooks from Connecticut newspapers as well as other locations related to SNET history as well as pamphlets, booklets and bill inserts produced by SNET.
Exhibits
Today’s phone calls seem almost magical: with just the click of a button and your cell phone in hand, you can contact anyone anywhere from Philadelphia or New York instantly. But 100 years ago was much different: dialing was done manually with complicated equipment; so visiting the Telephone Museum provides a unique opportunity to witness how far technology has advanced while simultaneously understanding its history and development in communications technology.
The Archives at the museum house an impressive collection of Edmonton telephone directories dating from 1895 to today*; technical manuals related to telecommunication technologies dating back to 1800s; and various items that help tell this chapter in Canadian history.
The Museum boasts an extraordinary collection of old phones and equipment which is on public display, such as manual telephone switchboards, step-by-step automatic branch exchanges (demonstrating the stepping switch principle), mobile phones from 1980s car models to today’s cellular phones, among others.
Events
The Telephone Historical Centre is a volunteer-run museum dedicated to showcasing an area of telecommunication history. Established in 1997, its Telephone Pioneer Museum can be found inside an old telephone building built in 1906 – featuring an incredible array of equipment and history related to telecom.
Early telephone users were skeptical and even fearful, especially those living in rural areas where telephone poles proliferated and lines ran across fields or rooftops. People in towns feared the wires might bring evil spirits or lightning directly onto them; some even went to telephone stations seeking relief for rheumatism by believing electrical impulses sent across them could cure their condition.
The museum boasts a fully operational manual switchboard and Step-by-Step private automatic branch exchange as well as historical but functional telephones, providing visitors with an opportunity to learn about the history of wired telephone networks – now nearly extinct!
