Students, researchers, or those simply curious can discover Edmonton’s telephone history at this unique archive. Here you will find vintage phone directories; technical manuals dating back to the 1800s; books about telecom technology and history as well as vintage telephone directories from around the country. *Sadly, The Telephone Historical Centre closed on April 28, 2019. The foundation behind it cited relevancy issues as well as financial concerns as being reasons for its decision to close.

Collections

This collection comprises an eclectic array of artifacts, such as equipment, employee awards and commemorative materials. Additionally, framed artwork and scrapbooks are present; in particular, the Historical Oversized Fragile Restricted subseries holds larger photographs and scrapbooks which require special handling.

The collection contains many vintage telephone directories dating from 1895 to present day*, technical manuals and books on telecom technology and history, plus periodicals and newspapers related to telephone technology; plus miscellaneous items dating back as far as 1956 such as phone book covers or notice of number changes.

Series VII: Publications (1878-1998) is organized alphabetically and contains several subseries. One, Clippings, contains newspaper clippings and scrapbooks relating to SNET and its predecessor companies; Material Produced by SNET contains pamphlets and booklets covering topics like customer service or business issues produced by SNET; in addition, large binders contain sample advertisements from Yellow Pages.

Exhibits

At this hands-on museum, visitors will explore how communications technology has advanced from Alexander Graham Bell’s famous rotary dial telephone and the switching systems powering his network to modern mobile phones used today. Learn about Edmonton’s history of telecomm technology with this one-of-a-kind collection!

This collection highlights the technological innovation, ingenuity, and craftsmanship essential to the creation of wired communications networks. Beginning with the invention of the telephone and its related technologies to those responsible for designing and building these networks in Edmonton and beyond – this unique collection showcases how wired telecommunications have changed over time.

THG was established by a group of telecommunications employees who were outraged to see historical items being thrown away as buildings were closed down and equipment became outdated. Thus they created THG to preserve these pieces for posterity and tell the tale of telecom. THG features many fascinating and historic exhibits, including an original Panel private automatic branch exchange (demonstrating the stepping switch principle), manual telephone switchboards, period phones and many others that make for fascinating viewing!

Research

Students, researchers, or those simply fascinated with telephone history can make use of this unique resource. It houses vintage telephone directories from 1895; technical manuals related to telephone technology since 1800; as well as other books of interest about telecom technology and history.

Joseph Henry, who served as Secretary and was an esteemed electromagnetism physicist, is said to have assisted Alexander Graham Bell with his early efforts at building a telephone. It’s no surprise then, that Joseph Henry introduced instant communication among workrooms and offices at the Smithsonian through this means in June 1878.

Researchers may access materials Monday-Friday between 8:00 am -5:00 pm from Monday to Friday from 8:00 am -5.00 pm, although out-of-town researchers should contact staff prior to arriving. Please be aware that large bags, food and pens are not permitted within the research room and large cameras with flash enabled must be disabled before they are permitted in. Please also speak to staff if you plan on coming from out-of-town for any assistance during imaging processes involving historic materials. The library allows personal digital cameras; please disable flash before taking pictures in order to avoid confusion from staff archivists available during imaging processes; for any assistance please speak directly with staff upon arriving or before visiting staff will give more instructions when required.

At this hands-on museum, you’ll witness, touch and experience real electromechanical marvels that helped pave the way to computers and smart phones. Here you can explore working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical central office switches; antique telephones; switchboards as well as outside plant displays like poles cables and splicing equipment – all on display at The Edmonton Telephone Historical Centre which opened its doors for business on December 3, 1987 in Old Strathcona.

Museum & Education Centre

Education programs at the Museum – such as guided gallery tours, distance learning courses and family programs – are tailored for visitors of all ages and interests. Educators work directly with visitors in its state-of-the-art classrooms and exhibition spaces as well as online and through public streets – giving them stable contracts with fair payment and recognition as professional museum educators.

Discover the fascinating history of telecommunications at this captivating museum in Edmonton. Gain insight into its first wired telephone network and all its incredible inventions that made it possible. Peruse an artifact collection dating all the way back to 1885–from Edmonton’s first telephone to contemporary flip phones!

Established by retired employees from ED TEL, the Museum first opened its doors on December 3, 1987 in Old Strathcona neighbourhood before finally finding its permanent home at Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre in 2004. Being Canada’s largest museum in its field, they offer self-guided or guided group tours.

Living History Farm

Wander through authentically restored farmstead structures and meet historical-costumed interpreters as they present daily tasks typical of traditional family farms. Activities change throughout the year based on season; you might see staff planting heirloom vegetables in the kitchen garden, shearing sheep, chopping wood or cooking in the farmhouse.

Visit Museum of the Rockies’ Living History Farm and experience Montana homestead life first hand. Learn how daily work such as sowing crops, mend cloth and cooking fed families while social gatherings such as quilting bees and barn-raisings were an integral part of helpful labor.

Missouri Town recreates a western town from 1822-1860. Come explore authentic buildings and artifacts from seven western Missouri counties!

Students gain historical perspective through engaging and hands-on history lessons. Furthermore, they develop communication and sales skills while raising funds for Ferris student scholarships and programs.

Due to cancellation of in-person events and research during the Covid-19 pandemic, the HBEC program implemented this telephone outreach project as a means of remaining in touch with registry members. This paper discusses key outcomes and lessons learned that may facilitate program replication.

The History of the Telephone

The invention of the telephone marked an unprecedented transformation. Huge technological and organizational efforts were required for its conception to completion; and its transformational effect could be felt across industries including business, education, public health, entertainment, personal communication and social contacts.

At first, privacy was an issue in early times. Since most homes weren’t wired together, calls had to be made between houses using party lines – meaning your neighbors could easily listen in on any private conversations you had. Switchboard operators would also breach your privacy by connecting callers directly.

Alexander Graham Bell created an exchange system to address privacy and the impracticality of wire connections among phone subscribers, which allowed all phones to share one central battery rather than each requiring its own. This reduced connection costs and made wiring cheaper; eventually it became commercially successful but would have never existed without Antonio Meucci, Charles Bourseul and Elisha Gray’s earlier work.

The World of Communications

Discover the rich history and evolution of telecom and modern mobile technologies at this interactive museum. Guests are encouraged to interact with real telephones as well as the switchboards that powered them; visitors are also provided an opportunity to use real telephones and their corresponding switchboards and switching systems, including manual private automatic branch exchange and stepping switch equipment that demonstrate electromechanical marvels that helped pave the way to computers, cell phones and modern mobile technology.

Established by retired employees of ED TEL, the Telephone Historical Centre first opened its doors on December 3, 1987 at Old Strathcona telephone exchange building and then relocated to Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre in 2004. Group and individual tours are available and interactive exhibits showcase communications principles alongside a multi-media historical telecommunications theatre show.

In April of 2019, the foundation behind Edmonton Telephone Historical Centre decided to dissolve, citing factors including relevance, finances, structural problems and succession planning as reasons for doing so.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust was Nazi Germany’s attempt to murder every Jew living in Europe through propaganda, persecution and laws denying Jewish rights; its violent manifestation included legal discrimination, physical displacement and forced labor.

Perpetrators employed various means to destroy Jewish communities and individuals, from mass shootings on an unprecedented scale, to asphyxiation with poison gas. German units moved throughout occupied territory killing Jews by the thousands on the edges of towns, cities, and villages.

Perpetrators interned Jews in overcrowded ghettoes and concentration camps. Deportation transports were used to ship them off for deportation; many died on these voyages while some died from starvation, disease and abuse in extermination centers such as Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Perpetrators included government officials, police forces and members of Nazi organizations such as SA (stormtroopers or Brownshirts) and SS; many civilians helped perpetrators out of antisemitism or personal scores that needed settling or hopes that wealth might come their way from confiscated property confiscated upon confiscation.

The Future of the Telephone

The telephone was a significant boon to privacy in many ways, providing calls at home as an escape from intrusions like surprise visits from relatives or door-to-door salesmen. Yet its introduction also exposed people to potential eavesdroppers; switching-room operators may listen in on personal conversations.

Future mobile telephones will have the ability to see, shrink down while growing larger, and fit seamlessly into their users’ skins – this was one of the main findings from Technische Universitat Darmstadt’s “Future Internet” research cluster.

As technology develops, even small, local businesses will become less dependent upon voice communications and more accessible to their customers. Numa is one example of such an emerging phone system – check it out now to discover how its future promises you an easy connection to all your favorite local companies, even while on the move!

The exhibition honors generations of people who put up poles, buried cables and developed and managed technology that revolutionized how we communicate. This collection features virtually every form of communication used on Guernsey up until the mid 1990s.

Documents, equipment samples and photographs in this archive documenting the evolution of communications from Edmonton’s first manual system telephone in 1885 up until today’s mobile phones.

Manual System Telephones

Prior to automatic number identification (ANI), customers would contact a human operator in order to place long distance calls. On making an incoming call, the operator would check an indicator light for the telephone number that had come through, then connect the ringing cord into its respective jack field in the switchboard or central office to connect it and place the call.

At that time, manual system phones were equipped with a rotary dial and included the Western Electric Candlestick Phones. For rural and small town usage, magneto phones were preferred – their subscribers turning a crank would generate an alarm signal to alert the operator while dry cell batteries provided power for transmitting it directly.

Manual service required customers to be connected manually by operators following verbal instructions. For instance, when someone in a manual exchange (e.g. TAylor 4725) called LEnnox 5813 at another central office and dialed it directly, an operator would plug a cord into its trunk for that destination.

Telephone Booths

A telephone booth (also referred to as a public call box, telephone kiosk or payphone) is a small structure designed for user comfort that houses a payphone and usually features privacy doors as well as window indicators to indicate when it is in use; some booths even come equipped with paper directories containing local phone numbers.

Pointe-a-Calliere’s collection of phones and related artifacts honors generations of people who worked tirelessly to develop telephony, construct poles and bury cables, design network technology to run networks efficiently, install phones in homes, offices, schools and businesses, design new networks if needed and install phones for homes, offices schools and businesses alike. It features many intriguing artifacts.

Visitors to London can also witness one of Britain’s iconic cultural symbols – the red telephone box (known as a booth in America). Although these iconic boxes are slowly disappearing from public view, some can still be found around Britain and former colonies with histories of colonialism; some even provide services such as Internet access or SMS text messaging!

Telephone Directories

The Collection holds directories dating back to 1878. These records not only include subscribers’ addresses but also exchange opening dates and local managers of Bell. Furthermore, independent company locations and subscribers are listed.

These directories can be searched alphabetically or alphabetically by address. Early directories included people’s professions and whether or not they rented or owned their homes, in addition to listing residential subscribers and advertising, maps of rapid transit systems, street maps and guides as well as lists of churches, schools, government offices and charitable organizations.

Many directories offer sections dedicated to elite businesses and shopping and restaurant guides. If you know your ancestor’s occupation, check this section of a directory. Directories also often contain instructions (for dialing specific numbers or emergency services information). Our collection houses telephone equipment, catalogues, photos and artifacts relating to civil defence and emergency services; highlights of this collection include book of sketches detailing construction of Beaver Hall building cornerstone; tools used by telephone linemen; as well as wire from early Brantford test runs.

Photographs

The Museum’s vast collection of artifacts and replicas tell the story of how telecommunication technology changed our lives, from erecting poles and burying cables, to designing and managing technology used to run networks, many people contributed towards building the system we know as modern telephony today.

The Photography department of the Museum is one of its oldest. With an emphasis on American 20th-century photography by major practitioners such as Paul Strand, Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, Andre Kertesz and Ilse Bing among many others; highlights also include early full-plate daguerreotypes by William Henry Fox Talbot who used photography to document natural history and architectural subjects as well as 19th-century lunar studies from various makers.

Series VII: Photographs is organized into three subseries: Contemporary, Contemporary Oversized and Transparencies. The Contemporary subseries is alphabetically organized by subject matter and contains 3 by 5 or 4 by 6 print photographs enclosed in clear protective sheets with titles, dates, SNET job numbers and sometimes locations written on them; whilst Contemporary Oversized holds larger transparencies used as publication covers or for advertising that were often grouped alphabetically by subject matter.

No matter your interest or age, this section has something to offer for every age and interest group. From discovering more about telecommunications history to witnessing how phones have progressed over time – this section has something for everyone!

This series includes files on exchange histories, facts and figures, personal recollections and historic buildings. Also included are binders containing newspaper clippings and scrapbooks that are being microfilmed for preservation purposes.

The Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution is one of the world’s greatest museums and research complexes, housing 17 museums and galleries, a zoo, and various research facilities. Their collection boasts more than 150 million objects, specimens, and works of art.

The Archives are home to numerous original volumes that provide invaluable insight into Alberta and Canadian telecommunications history, from maps and drawings, through photographs and posters to posters and prints. Furthermore, large bins contain advertising samples dating from 1950s-1980s advertising campaigns.

The Archives’ holdings in Canadian Telephony history are comprehensive, covering every facet of telephone development in Canada. Their collections reveal all aspects of this history from politics, competitions and personalities involved with its development – as well as modern communication’s roots at this juncture following fur trade’s end – through pioneering telephone pioneers as well as their technologies and companies supporting them.

The Telephone Museum

The telephone is one of the world’s most-utilized telecommunications devices, allowing instant, personal communication with anyone anytime anywhere at an economical and user-friendly price point.

The Museum features working electromechanical central office-type switching equipment as well as a catalogued telecommunications reference library, in addition to offering various telephones, switchboards and outside plant displays that include poles, wires and tools for display.

Bell Canada officers made the initial decision to create the Collection by agreeing to preserve all documents, photographs, equipment samples and records related to their predecessors in the telephone business. Over time it has grown into an archive that contains files on Bell-Northern Research and Development Laboratories, independent telephone companies, telecommunications in foreign countries as well as correspondence dates photos samples equipment samples equipment of every era from across time and place.

Candlestick phones and wooden box phones fill endless racks, alongside classic rotary phones and novelty ones like Hush-a-phone (for private conversations), Desk Grab-a-phone and the phone James used from a cigar shop to report President McKinley’s assassination more than 100 years ago.

The Edmonton Telephone Museum

The Edmonton Telephone Museum is a telecommunications museum in Edmonton, Alberta founded by retired employees of ED TEL in 1987 and opened to the public shortly thereafter. Since its move to its current location at Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre in central Edmonton it offers guided tours for groups as well as individuals.

The museum houses an impressive array of artifacts, such as a fully functioning hands-on switchboard and step-by-step private automatic branch exchange that demonstrate how these systems operated. There are also photographs and early telephone directories.

The museum is open to the public and provides an ideal opportunity to gain knowledge about telecom. Its large collection of memorabilia will appeal to visitors of all ages. Admission is free of charge; donations are welcomed.

The Telephone Archives

The Telephone Archives is a vast digital archive containing images and historical information ranging from porcelain telephone signs to manufacturer catalogs, founded in 2001 as part of BT Heritage, a corporate responsibility initiative to preserve telecom artifacts.

The Archives possess an extensive collection of historical telephone photographs, videos and films, depicting old equipment, engineers and operators at work as well as local scenes and landmarks. A curated selection can be seen online via BT Group’s image library where some have even been scanned to become searchable.

The Archives also houses an impressive selection of vintage telephone directories dating from 1895 to present day, along with many technical manuals on telecommunications technology and history. This resource provides a rich resource for anyone interested in Edmonton’s telecom heritage; students and researchers can visit to explore this remarkable collection; plus there are oral histories available here too!