Making Connections

PHONES' HOME:  Thursday morning, three of us headed just a little north and west of MPA's campus to a one-of-a kind museum in Seattle's Georgetown district.

Open only four days a month and hidden away in a non-descript building in a hardscrabble part of town, Connections Museum, a collection of working artifacts from the telephone industry history, is easy to miss from the outside. In fact, I think we've probably driven by it 200+ times without knowing it's there. 

Who knew all this was so close yet so far?!

Upon stepping into the site, my first thought was that it felt like an extension of the awesome Living Computers: Museum + Labs.  Like LCM, at Connections, not only were the archival machines on site, they are functioning! 

 Look at the glowing control panels. Aren't they lovely?

Typewritten instructions everywhere!

CJ can tell you a bit more about the place. ...

Today, I went on a field trip to the Connections Museum in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle. The museum's website describes itself as follows:
Our museum features working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical (sic) central-office switches. We also have working Step-by-Step and Crossbar PBX equipment as well as antique telephones, switchboards, outside plant displays (poles, cables, splicing equipment, and tools) and a reference library.

Our tour began on the third floor, where Sarah Autumn (a tour guide) led us to the sights of the very old telephone equipment. For much of our time on the third floor, Autumn showed us telephonic communication equipment circa 1923, which relied on a large series of "panels" raising and lowering various components to carry phone calls from the caller to the called. Autumn let me (try to) use a phone from the 1920s to call another phone a few feet away.

Afterwards, Autumn showed us more telephone equipment, circa the 1950s. Autumn remarked that since she mostly works with the 1920s equipment, the 1950s equipment seems "futuristic" or something along those lines. The new(er) equipment is much cleaner-looking and more space-efficient than the older equipment. According to Autumn, many phone stations' most busy day annually was Mothers' Day, when countless people would call their mothers with telephones. The equipment would make noise when calls were made, so on busy days, the equipment could be making noise all day. Some people who used to work with telephonic communication equipment reportedly still have hearing aids.

Check out the rainbow spaghetti on site.
 Astounding and impressive!

One thing our tour guide pointed out to us is we were being bathed in multiple banks of florescent tube lighting fixtures. Back in the day, they didn't have those. They had these (below), and worked had to scramble about the facility, with all its knobs, switches and wires with flashlights in hand!

We also learned about how communications worked out in the field. The 'swing' seat below was how technicians worked the wires for a good number of years. 

The diagram below showed a progression of wires.

 Technicians in the field often had to repair the wires, including melting down lead to make patches. 

Check out this cluster - a cut end of a big cable!

I couldn't help but notice all of the documentation on site. One of our tour guides, Sarah, told us that she has been working for over a year to help get just a fraction of them in order. 

There were so many working alleyways of floor to ceiling circuits. Astounding! Gosh, I'd love to see video of people 60+ years ago working in this space.

Hundreds of different phones were on display. 

CJ got to place a real live call on a hundred year old phone. 

Later, I coveted this see-through 1970s model!

The kids stand next to a futuristic model for the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle.

Likewise, this "Space Age" phone was created for the Space Needle. When its rotating restaurant was constructed, they had to come up with a cord-free way of installing communications there.

 The museum is an homage to Herbert H. Warrick Jr.

Annabelle has this to say about her visit: 

Connections Museum is a small facility near the Museum of Flight dedicated to keeping a working history of the telephone. There are two levels of the museum- the first our field trip group went to was the upper level which held large, functional Panel & Crossbar office Switches, the large machines that were used to dial phone numbers. Almost randomly, the machines clack repeatedly whenever a number is input. They take up a huge portion of the floor, meaning workers would frequently have to use ladders to fix the upper levels of the Switch. The panel Switch uses brushes up and down on metal rods to create the contact that registers the number. The Crossbar Switch presses down on certain combinations of bars on the grid to register the number, also creating a lot of noise. Both, while the panel switch is finicky, do work to call phones within the building.

The second level contains a small display of cabling (from phone lines to underground ducts), while the majority is dedicated to vintage phones. There’s a room featuring multiple wall-mounted phones without a way to dial- you would have to be connected via Operator. Our guide showed us that in some rural towns, someone had to volunteer to be operator and keep an eye on the panel 24/7. As phones advanced, soon they didn’t need a wire to connect to the operator. The first “wireless” phone was actually used in the top of the Space Needle during the world’s fair after workers realized that, in case of an emergency, there would be no way to get help as there was no wiring up the needle. From there, phones became a standard household item.You can learn more about the Connections Museum at their website, http://www.museumofcommunications.org/

Here's a vintage news story about the museum
https://youtu.be/PDyWCDYuD_0


Connections Museum has their own YouTube channel with more videos. Check them out here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm87i_qG_B-rRvG7NWqyVLw

All in all, our visit there was too short. We can't wait to go back!