Oklahoma Museum of Telephone History
Oklahoma City
Founded: Late 1990s
Before everyone had cell phones, there were rotary phones. Before that, candlestick phones. Switchboard operators connected calls from all over the country.
“We’re trying to show people the evolution of the telephone and the telegraph and how that transpired in Oklahoma,” says George Gibson, a former Bell employee and director of the Oklahoma Museum of Telephone History.
The museum houses several eras of telephones, switchboards, telephone directories and other related artifacts dating back to before 1900.
Gibson says that most visitors are attracted to the operating automatic switch board, which allows visitors to make phone calls from one phone to another and watch as the switch board makes the connection.
