Telephone Operators at the Rockland Telephone History Center

Greetings everyone. After a long hiatus, we had a great open house at the Rockland Telephone History Center on Saturday, November 18th, from 12 to 5pm. This was a part of the 4th Floor Artists Gallery Open house at both the Sandpaper Factory (where the Rockland Telephone History Center is located), as well as the W.T. Wright Building around the corner from us. Artists had their work out for holiday shoppers, and here at the Rockland Telephone History Center, we demonstrated how our old phones, switchboards and automatic dial switches work, as kids and adults came by to see us. Our museum technical guru, Stan St. Onge led the tours while our operators on duty connected calls on our cord switchboards, dating from 1921 thru the 1950’s.
As a part of this, we out an invitation through the C*Net and Phreaknet newsgroups as well as family members and friends who had visited the museum previously, to call in and join in our International and Long-Distance “Party-Lines” call in session, which was open from 1:30pm to 3:30pm Eastern Time. We received calls from friends as well as old phone and technical enthusiasts from Romania, the Netherlands, Spain, Canada, as well as from all over the United States. It was a fun and interactive afternoon!
During the call in and visits, while running the Long Distance and Toll switchboard, I took some video clips of our operators in action, as well as made some audio recordings so you could hear what was going on at the museum during the call in and as groups of people came in to use our phones and place calls to our operators.
My hope is, we will do another one of these call in sessions during another museum open house in January of 2024, date to be announced.
Thank you to all of you who came by to visit, and who were a part of our Party-Lines call in session. We were thrilled to share our joy of this old world of telephones and equipment with people both young and old.
We would love to hear from you if you were a part of our open house, as well as your comments about the videos and audio records we have placed here. If they have brought back personal memories of your life back when hard wired analog phones were the norm, or if you were a telephone operator, we’d love to hear your stories! Please post them here. Also, if you have any questions about anything you see, or hear, we’d be happy to answer them.
You may contact me by email at [e-mail], or by phone or text at 207-382-8300.
Thank you for your interest!
Sincerely,
Chris Ricciotti
RTHC Museum Curator