Beginning as the initiative of one Bell Canada employee, this collection now comprises more than 1000 pieces of artifacts and reproductions.
Following public outrage over the sale-off of classic red telephone boxes, Avoncroft secured funding from BT’s Payphone Division to restore them.
Exhibits
Exhibits at this museum showcase everything from early wooden wall phones and rotary dial phones, novelty phones and switchboards all the way through to newer automated exchanges and manual line switching technologies.
Bell Canada employees took an early initiative to collect samples of outmoded equipment that otherwise would have been thrown out and this helped form the basis of an important industry resource.
Documents, photographs, and catalogs provide a history of telephone manufacturing from its founding at Brantford in 1878 to Bell-Northern’s Research and Development laboratories today. There are also comprehensive files pertaining to individual telephone companies as well as developments within this industry over time.
Dostcards
Few inventions have revolutionized communication as much as the telephone. This collection explores its development over time through technological, cultural and business evolutions.
The museum features an impressive collection of working central office step switches, operator switchboards and crank wall phones to demonstrate how networks were operated in the past. Furthermore, an early Kellogg Universal switchboard allows visitors to use switches to connect circuits between cord and lamp pairs.
The collection boasts an abundance of dostcards that enable researchers to trace historical callers and their locations, such as photographs, news articles and telegraph messages sent across the telephone network. Furthermore, this vast archive boasts one of North America’s largest telecommunications reference libraries.
Motion Pictures
The museum’s collection of motion pictures represents the history of moving images in Roseville and globally, including movie posters; costumes; glass slides and technical apparatus; scrapbooks; correspondence with actors/directors and portraits from this unique archive.
Utilizing never-before-seen still photos and archival sound recordings, the film tells the tale of an invention that revolutionized how we communicated. Furthermore, this documentary provides a fascinating study of American culture and society at the turn of the century.
The museum provides an entertaining and educational family outing; is ideal for school field trips; and serves as an essential venue to fulfill engineering merit badge requirements for Boy Scouts. Docents – current and retired employees from ED TEL – guide visitors through its exhibits free of charge.
Tape Recordings
Few innovations have had as profound an effect on business, society and culture as the telephone. Through an exquisite collection of full-sized Magneto switchboards, step-by-step private automatic branch exchanges and rare phone booths at its exhibition space, Telephone Historical Centre traces this technology’s development over time.
Tape recording was first developed during World War II by German engineers, providing two major advantages for studios: it allowed recordings to go beyond the 30-minute disc limit; and audio could be edited, setting off digital manipulation of sound that revolutionized music production.
The Collection holds an array of vintage crank phones, hand-operated switchboards and antique talking apparatus. Additionally, early directories listing subscribers are held within. An arrangement has been put forth to microfilm these directories as well.
Collections
The museum features an impressive collection of antique phones and other forms of telecommunication technology from Alexander Graham Bell’s inaugural phone to cell phones – from their introduction into business, society and culture.
Telephone technology has changed so rapidly over time that it’s easy to forget its revolutionary nature. At this museum, there is an opportunity to see this historic instrument up close: wall phones made of wood or fabric, hand-crank magneto phones and rotary dial phones are just some of the items featured here.
Exhibits at the museum include a full-sized magneto switchboard, Step-by-Step private automatic branch exchange and rare telephone booths. Furthermore, it features an extensive collection of historical telecommunications items – tools used by linemen as well as an outdoor plant display with telephone poles, wire and splicing equipment – in its archives.
