Few inventions have had as profound an effect on society than the telephone. Telecommunication museums honor and share its significant technological legacy by using careful preservation, research, and storytelling techniques to bring it alive for visitors.
Many of the volunteers at this museum are former telecom employees like linemen and switchboard operators who can share firsthand knowledge as they guide visitors around its facility, featuring an operational operator switchboard as well as outdoor plant displays featuring poles wires and splicing equipment tools.
Opening Hours
Established by active and retired telephone company employees, this museum presents an expansive collection of telephones and telecommunication equipment. Housed at Jefferson Barracks Park in St Louis, Missouri, visitors may explore both group tours as well as individual visits; visually guided tours are also available for those unable to visit the lower floor of the building.
Telephone Historical Centre houses one of North America’s largest collections of antique telecommunication equipment dating back centuries – including Alexander Graham Bell’s Gallows Frame and Thomas Watson’s Thumper Phone, to modern videophone technology – visitors will experience history when they visit Telephone Historical Centre.
The museum was established by a group of former ED TEL retirees and first opened its doors in 1987. Today it remains at its permanent home within Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre in central Edmonton with an expansive collection of everything from wooden box phones, candlestick wall phones and classic rotary phones to working central office switchboards with operator panels and crossbar electromechanical switching mechanisms.
Admission
The Telephone Historical Centre was an interactive museum that offered visitors an engaging way to explore and learn more about telecommunications development. Established by retired ED TEL employees in 1987 and originally situated in Old Strathcona neighbourhood, its location was later switched to Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre to improve accessibility.
The museum held a variety of artifacts, such as its extensive collection of original telephones. This included Alexander Graham Bell’s Gallows Frame phone to Thomas A. Watson’s Thumper phone; as well as a solid wood wall-mounted operator switchboard and many other telephone-related items.
The Telephone Historical Group, an accredited non-profit organization, operated and maintained the museum. Exhibits focus on communications principles while an extraordinary multi-media Telecommunication Theatre Show experience was provided for visitors.
Parking
Telephone Historical Centre was founded by a collective of retired ED TEL workers with the purpose of collecting, organizing, documenting and exhibiting material related to Edmonton’s telecom history. Established on December 3rd 1987 in Old Strathcona and relocated to Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre for improved accessibility, Telephone Historical Centre is a non-profit organization accredited by Museums Alberta. A fascinating display of an operational Panel and Crossbar electromechanical central office switch, operator switchboards, outdoor plant displays featuring poles, cables, splicing equipment and tools as well as hundreds of telephone-related items ranging from solid wood wall-mounted devices to sleek cellular phones allows visitors to engage with telecom history directly.
Group Tours
The museum houses an eclectic assortment of wooden and metal telephones, early switchboards, novelty items and novelty collections that were established by retired ED TEL employees in 1987 and opened their doors to the public by December of that year. Later it moved to Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre before finally receiving accreditation by Museums Alberta.
These exhibits explore the development of communication technology since Alexander Graham Bell’s accidental invention to today, from open wire telephone lines that once formed part of America’s landscape to rotary phones, candlestick phones, solid wood wall mount phones, phone booths, Princess phones and flip phones.
Groups may tour the museum either with or without a guide, as the facility features working electromechanical central office switches and crossbar switches, an operator switchboard, step-by-step private automatic branch exchange (showcasing its stepping switch principle), antique line insulators, linemen’s pole climbing stirrups, office telephone computer machines, as well as outside plant displays of poles, cables, splicing equipment and tools.
