THG was established by retired telecom professionals with a desire to preserve history. Their museum features working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical step switches as well as poles, cables and splicing equipment.
Children love listening to the clickety-clack of old telephones while older visitors recall memories about one-town phone companies they may remember from years past. Admission to this museum is completely free for everyone!
Educational Outreach Programs
Through our vast collection, we showcase the ingenuity, craftsmanship and industry of telecommunications. Visitors are encouraged to touch and explore various telephones, rotary dial machines, switchboards and other equipment from throughout history. Furthermore, visitors may observe how telephone technology has advanced from wall-mounted solid wood handsets with operator control dials all the way through solid wood wall mounts featuring hand cranks for operator-directed phone service to pocket sized touchscreen cellular phones today.
At our two-year longitudinal evaluation, we are testing the impact of our scalable STEM style program for children and teenagers that aspire to become engineers. Based on eight years of formative evaluation data that demonstrate improvement in participants’ engineering interest, science knowledge, history knowledge, mathematics knowledge and self-efficacy; workshops feature electric theory with particular attention being paid to Ohm’s Law, semiconductor technology and telephone collection collections – providing participants with opportunities to ‘take stuff apart’, stimulating that intrinsic curiosity that was the inspiration for early telephone invention and continues today among inventors and innovators.
Exhibits
Modern life cannot live without telephones; this museum pays homage to their ancestors by housing an extensive collection from Alexander Graham Bell’s workshop through modern day models. Archives contain unique original volumes such as vintage telephone directories and technical manuals. Crank wall phones and decorator phones, step switches and XY switches are among many fascinating objects housed here.
Since 1987 (first in Old Strathcona neighbourhood and later Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre), this telephone museum has become one of North America’s premier hands-on museums. Its collection includes working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical central office switches, antique telephones and switchboards, outside plant displays with poles cables splicing equipment tools as well as an expansive cataloged telecommunication reference library. Knowledgeable docents who volunteer their time from current or retired phone company employees show visitors through this fascinating facility while giving visitors an unforgettable experience of how communication technology has advanced from smoke signals to smoke signals dialers all the way through to smartphones in our pockets!
Group Tours
At this museum you’ll see working examples of telecom equipment dating back to wooden prototypes that launched it all through to electro-mechanical marvels that led us to computers and smart phones. Unlike most museums, visitors are welcome to touch and use telephones and switchboards in this interactive, hands-on exhibit.
Discover candlestick wall phones, classic rotary phones and novelty phones as well as a two-position Kellogg universal switchboard that lets you simulate manual line switching at phone exchanges before automation became commonplace. Also on display are step-by-step private automatic branch exchanges as well as various sizes and shapes of insulators plus outdoor plant exhibits with poles, cables and splicing equipment.
Group tours for groups of 10 or more can be arranged at least four weeks ahead, to save on admission costs. Leave the smartphone at home and come experience one of the largest telephone-related collections west of the Mississippi!
Contact Us
The Museum’s extensive collection of telephones and equipment spans more than a century of communications technology, showing its development from solid wooden wall-mounted phones with hand cranking operator control through to modern pocket sized touch-screen cellular phones with touch screens and pocket memory capabilities.
One of the premier hands-on museums in North America, this museum is dedicated to preserving, organizing, documenting and exhibiting Edmonton Alberta’s telecom history. Established by retired ED TEL employees in 1987 and relocated to Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre in central Edmonton since 1997, its exhibits include working panel and crossbar electromechanical central office type switching systems; outdoor plant displays featuring poles cables splicing equipment tools antique telephones crank wall phones decorator phones and switchboards that display how communication technologies have developed; working central office type switching systems along with plant displays including poles cables splicing equipment as well as displays featuring poles cables splicing equipment and tools as well as antique telephones that tell an amazing tale.
Tours of all ages can be accommodated, and an organized reference library offers additional research capabilities. Please contact the museum for further inquiries.
