Post 2: Telephone Museum

My trip the to the telephone museum was so interesting! My favorite room in the museum was the switchboard operator’s room. The switchboard operators were an essential part of how the telephone system worked! Without them people wouldn’t have been able to stay connected. I was amazed at the size of the machines and how “complex” they were. I can only imagine how hard their job must have been.

Another cool part of the museum was the dialing demonstration that showed a step-by-step process of how local calls were made. I was amazing to see this machine dial a number. You had to type in the number you wanted to call, and then a phone that was sitting right next to the machine would ring once the call had been connected! It was amazing!

It was weird to see the type of wall phones that they had back in the day. It was like the ones you see in old movies where you have to use the crank to dial a number. It was interesting to see how the telephone changed over the years. The phones that they had in the 60’s and 70’s were bright colored and looked similar to some phone that we still have today. The wooden phone booths were also very similar to what we have today. The old pay phones also looked similar to those of today. They just had a different ear/mouth piece but the overall design has stayed the same.

This museum was a great opportunity to explore the technology of the past. The museum was full of so much history! It was really neat to spend time thinking about technology of the past. All of the telephones and switchboards were so complex. After seeing all of the work people went through to deliver messages and connect phone calls, I definitely feel like we take today’s modern technology for granted.