ELLSWORTH, Maine — The busy road between Bangor and Ellsworth carries a steady stream of traffic every day past the turnoff to The Telephone Museum. But few passers-by are curious enough to turn down the Winkumpaugh Road and follow it less than a mile to the common-looking barn that houses this decidedly uncommon collection.
“People think they’re going to come here and see 1,200 telephones in glass cases,” docent and board member David Thompson said during a recent tour. “What they learn is that we’re really into telephony,” all the equipment, history and culture of telephone technology.
The collection at the museum includes dozens of telephones, ranging from wall-mounted, wooden crank models from the late 1800s to sleek Trimlines from the mid-1960s, the first design to incorporate a backlit rotary dial — and, later, the innovative Touch Tone panel — into the handset. The old phones are fun and familiar, and many, with the exception of a group of Jim Beam decanters disguised as vintage telephones, are in working order and can be used to dial up other phones within the museum’s internal network.
But the real substance of this collection is in the equipment most people have never seen. Tabletop manual magneto switchboards from the 1920s once connected local callers in small-town systems. Larger, wall-mounted switchboards with long-distance capability provided stations for several operators. And an eight-unit section of 11-foot-tall crossbar frames from the Belfast, Maine, system, installed after World War II, not only connected long-distance users without using operator assistance at all but also kept track of individual accounts and billed for toll calls.
“When Belfast switched over to digital service in 1991,” Thompson said, gesturing at the towering metal frames, “this was all replaced with five cabinets the size of a refrigerator.”
Switching equipment like this was — and still is — often hidden away from public view for security purposes and to maintain competitive advantage.
“This equipment had a form of electronic memory and is a precursor of the computers in use today,” founding board member Charlie Dunne of Beverly, Massachusetts, said. “There was a time when the phone system in the United States was considered the largest electro-mechanical computer system in the world.”
Founded in 1984, the Telephone Museum attracts about 400 visitors each year, in addition to school groups and other organized tours. It’s located at 166 Winkumpaugh Road in Ellsworth and is wholly reliant on volunteers for leading tours, fundraising, managing donations of equipment and tinkering on the collection to keep it clean and in good running condition. Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for children. Hours are 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays through the end of September and other times by appointment. Call the museum at 207-667-9491 for more information.
