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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Try your hand at being an operator at the Roseville Telephone Museum

I don't know about you, but I marvel that, with a tiny device in my pocket, I can instantly hear the voice of any of my loved ones, any time, essentially for free.

Of course, this wasn't always the case. I'm old enough (nearly 37!) to remember when the phone would ring from overseas relatives and my parents would remind us to hurry to the phone: IT'S LONG DISTANCE! And yes, my parents used to pick up the phone and disrupt my dial-up Internet escapades.

But our contemporary landscape, replete with theoretically smart handputers, has an amazing past that extends well beyond my lifetime.

So, if you want to be dazzled at a free museum located just outside Sacramento, may I present to you what might be the nerdiest and most obscure free museum in Northern California: the Roseville Telephone Museum. It claims to have "one of the most extensive collections of antique telephones and memorabilia in the nation."

[...] I was grateful for the docents who meandered about and were all too happy to not only answer all my dumb questions, but they were even enthusiastic about giving live demos of a more-than-century-old magneto switchboard.

Simply by plugging in a cable, an old phone just a few feet away would ring. There was even a mid-20th century automated mechanical switching box, which had replaced live human operators.

I could have spent hours in that little museum, but I'd arrived not too long before closing time. Maybe because I'd shown such interest in the museum, I was handed a large hardback volume from 1995: History of the Roseville Telephone Company. (I hadn't mentioned to anyone that I was a reporter, I swear!)

[...] Just bear in mind, the museum will next be open on Saturday, January 5, 2019, from 10am until 2pm. Mark your calendars.

Original Submission