From rotary dial phones to mobiles, this collection of artifacts traces the development of communications technology. Additionally, they pay tribute to generations of men and women who built telephone networks by erecting poles, burying cables underground, designing technology platforms to operate them, installing them into homes and businesses and installing telephones themselves.
Rogers Kaufman, retired president of Gridley Telephone Company, spent years collecting items and documents with hopes of opening a museum in downtown Gridley.
Telephone Directories
Telephone directories (commonly referred to as white and yellow pages, phone books, contact lists or contact directories) contain alphabetically-arranged lists of residential and business telephone subscribers that include their names, street addresses and phone numbers in one section and business type information in another. At The Telephone Historical Centre Collections we hold an impressive selection of white and yellow directories.
Telephone directories can be an invaluable source for uncovering more information about how our ancestors lived and worked, chart transit maps, locate seat numbers at stadiums or restaurants and even finding the zip code of an ancestral hometown.
Before phone companies started charging for directory assistance, many people turned to local telephone directories as an effective way of circumventing such fees. Today, online directories make accessing yellow or white pages more convenient while still serving its core purpose: helping us locate those we need to contact.
Telephone Equipment
This collection celebrates the equipment that enabled telecommunication and pays tribute to generations of men and women who worked tirelessly on its establishment: they installed poles and cables underground, designed and managed technology used for its operation, installed telephones in people’s homes and businesses and more.
Our Collection boasts some of the oldest and most intriguing pieces of telephone equipment ever manufactured, such as the iconic red K-6 British call box made available to us by an enthusiastic Seattle radio amateur (or “ham”).
Subscribers lease equipment from their phone company, such as operator switchboards and hundreds of phones rented to subscribers from that provider. There are lit glass racks filled with candlestick and box phones; there are rotary dials; there are even novelty telephones like McKinley phones used over 100 years ago to report his assassination – these items make great collectibles!
Telephone Networks
Telecommunications have undergone immense change since Alexander Graham Bell first created his attic workshop back in 1876. This section of the museum traces this journey, detailing technological innovations and businesses which have emerged since.
The collection boasts an assortment of phone-related artifacts from field phones used during anti-Japanese war to office phones that once dominated business to home phones of various types and more.
This collection also provides an insight into the network that has been built to transport and route all these calls – such as networks using copper wires to connect homes and offices across cities and states; more automatic systems connecting customers directly to the national Public Switched Telephone Network; as well as modern wireless cellular phone networks using microwave technology that relay signals between cell towers and our phones – this virtual museum serves as an invaluable source of historical knowledge about all these networks.
Telephones
Telephone Historical Centre Collections showcase an astounding history of technological development since Alexander Graham Bell first patented his basic design. These telephones honor generations of individuals who worked tirelessly to construct and manage public switched telephone networks through erection of poles, burial of cables, designing technology platforms and making everything function efficiently.
This collection offers something for everyone – from general audiences and collectors, to telecom historians. It features working switching equipment and 32 kiosks of various designs as well as an operator switchboard from Winter Park Telephone Company as well as numerous home phones.
The museum is particularly proud of its gourd telephone, an innovative wall variation on the box phone which allowed executives to communicate with their assistants or courtiers from an anteroom without breaking stratification between lower and upper classes and providing security. It also contains many telephones from local homes – including one which enabled a grocery store owner to personally take orders from his customers on his personal line.
