The museum collects, organizes and exhibits telephones, telecommunication equipment and memorabilia related to their history – from Alexander Graham Bell’s box-shaped phone to crank wall phones – from all corners of telecommunication history.
HBEC’s outreach phone call project proved effective at collecting rich data on older adults during the pandemic and engaging registry participants even when in-person events weren’t possible.
Volunteers
The Telephone Historical Centre is an Edmonton museum devoted to collecting, researching, organizing, documenting, and exhibiting telecom history. Featuring hands on exhibits that illuminate communication principles as well as an entertaining Telecommunications Theatre Show, volunteers are vital to its success; aiding tours while managing youth activity tables or cataloging artifacts (some volunteer have formal artifact handling or library/archives experience).
Communications & Writing Volunteers assist with website development, Facebook updates, brochures and other written materials. Genealogy & Research Volunteers work with the History Center collections, Heritage Hunters library and local resources to assist patrons with family history research. Green Team Members keep Saratoga County clean by picking up litter, weeding gardens and gardening – fulfilling one of HBEC’s core missions of cross-site engagement while showing an effective method for engaging older adults on pandemic outreach projects.
Exhibits
Telecommunications museums provide tangible histories of communication technology to illuminate today’s connected world. From Alexander Graham Bell’s box telephone to modern cellular phones, museum collections illustrate how communications have developed throughout time.
The museum houses an outstanding collection of rotary dials, operator switchboards, working telecommunications equipment and tools used by linemen. An impressive glass insulators display honors rural and small town Midwest communities served by independent phone companies outside Bell System exchanges.
The Telecommunications Museum provides an exceptional learning experience that weaves science, history and the arts together through hands-on exhibits that demonstrate communication principles. Volunteers play an invaluable role in leading tours and youth activity tables as well as cataloguing artifacts (some volunteers even possess formal artifact handling or library/archives training).
Education
Established by former Southwestern Bell, SBC and AT&T employees as well as volunteers from Telecom Pioneers and Southwestern Bell Pioneers clubs, this self-guided museum displays hundreds of telephones and related equipment dating from Alexander Graham Bell’s workshop all the way through mobile phones used today. Explore rotary dials, manual switchboards and even an independent telephone exchange replica illustrating stepping-switch principle! This interactive museum truly makes history come alive.
As part of the National Institutes of Health-funded Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR), the HBEC was created with one goal in mind: engaging community partners as research collaborators. Therefore, during the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, it created a telephone outreach project designed to keep registry participants engaged without needing in-person events or programs; its primary goals included reducing social isolation, supporting community members, and offering recommendations based on participants’ expressed needs.
Events
The Museum’s collection of telephones and equipment from all eras of communication technology serves as tangible proof that technology has brought humanity together. Beginning with Alexander Graham Bell’s invention and development patent in 1876 to today’s smart phones and cellular technology which continues to revolutionize our lives, our educational programs, including Telecommunications Theatre Show, showcase their creativity and craftsmanship behind their creation and show how the industry was established around these innovations.
Our workshop program fosters enthusiasm for engineering by drawing inspiration from America’s unparalleled phone history and its spirit of entrepreneurialism. Our technical library staff and informal educators use formative evaluation techniques to measure participants’ learning outcomes. Surveys conducted during the Covid pandemic revealed that caller teams were very committed to offering support services, finding it highly rewarding in return. They had access to extensive directories that allowed them to identify what services would best meet participants’ expressed needs.
