Short Video of The Telephone Museum of P.E.I.

[DavePEI]

One of Saturdays visitors to the museum took a few minutes of video in the museum. He has posed it YouTube so you can get a little taste of what you would see if you visited the museum,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE_N5RNmxbw

Dave

[dpaynter1066]

Neat!  Now I have a good excuse to go to Canada.

[david@london]

.............thanks for posting that, dave. i enjoyed taking a short tour of your museum.

the thought occurs that it would be excellent to see a longer, in-depth guide to the museum + its contents. what about getting some local film students or similar in on the project ? a few introductory words about prince edward island perhaps ? personally, i would be very interested to see something like that.

david

[DavePEI]

the thought occurs that it would be excellent to see a longer, in-depth guide to the museum + its contents. what about getting some local film students or similar in on the project ? a few introductory words about prince edward island perhaps ? personally, i would be very interested to see something like that.

Hi David:

Yes, this was pretty well unexpected - he just asked if I minded if he videoed it...

And it is only a very small fraction of just one room in the museum, So there is a lot more he missed.Although there is one shot there of the 1240 switchboard, mag phones and older phones, he didn't start videoing it until we had passed those displays - to me, I would have liked it to start earlier as he came through the museum entrance-way and its telegraph and teletype equipment, the several payphones there, the superman booth and Centurion outdoors, the open wire display outdoors, and he completely missed the business system display, "playroom", the room where visitors can play with phones set up on line simulators and a Panasonic PBX, and barely caught the North American Strowger Demo and completely missed the new UK switching demo and VOIP equipment. He also missed my 1889 Bell Canada 3 Box Blake transmitter phone and the ten digit Strowger, arguably the most valuable of the phones in the collection.

Beggars can't be choosers, and it was appreciated that he took the time to do it.

It is a bit of a tantalizing teaser for people, and hopefully it will bring more to see the museum. If it does that, it will have done its job. I may set up an HD shoot some day. My camera can take HD video, so we may be able to do a better one in the future, especially with some time to plan it...

Dave

[DavePEI]

In addition to the above video, I have a number of videos on YouTube that I took of 4 of my various teletypes.

You can see them at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TelcoPEI/videos

Dave

[gpo706]

Dave that's very impressive, I also liked all the early mobile stuff you've collected.

[DavePEI]

Dave that's very impressive, I also liked all the early mobile stuff you've collected.

Thanks! There is a lot more mobile stuff, but I have limited the amount on display to keep the focus on POTS phones. Things like tons of Cell phones not on display, and Marconi DT-75 radios, etc., all ex-Island Tel.

Funny thing about the mobile stuff - I wasn't going to display any in the museum until an Australian visitor suggested I should. Accordingly, I began collecting the early brick and bag phones, and Handi-talkie, etc. They alone have grown into quite a collection.

[DavePEI]

Funny note:

I showed my wife the video this evening, and she said, "Who's the old guy!" She had better not try to sleep tonight! After all, we discovered my first grey hair on our wedding night 32 years ago.

You know, I was thinking... About doing a full video - in a way, I think this is even better, as it serves the purpose of showing people what they might see in the museum, without giving everything away. The big advantage, is it could be scripted, and what I would say would make a lot more sense, and the audio could be improved.

Something to ponder!

Dave

[AE_Collector]

A good tour Dave! I think I saw a phone or two that did time on the other coast of Canada before retiring to your museum! I modified the title of this thread to make it more descriptive

Terry

[DavePEI]

A good tour Dave! I think I saw a phone or two that did time on the other coast of Canada before retiring to your museum!

Yep there is the odd one of those, isn't there! 

Dave

[AE_Collector]

I knew you would be on here soon. Can't sleep here in BC (2:42 AM). Losing sleep over my leaking water line that I have to either dig up and fix/replace or find a contractor with a backhoe to do it for me.

Terry

[twocvbloke]

Nice bit of video of the museum, puts some of the pictures we've seen into place...

It would be a good idea to have tour of the museum on video, but not in the same manner you'd give a real person a tour and information about things (use the clause of "If you'd like to know more about the exhibits or to book a tour, please visit my website at ..... ", to give the people some enticement to go), and of course it can be scripted easily for what is where and who the manufacturers are, and also have the Strowger demo timed to run when you're filming courtesy of someone calling in when you need them to...

[gpo706]

Dave that's very impressive, I also liked all the early mobile stuff you've collected.

Thanks! There is a lot more mobile stuff, but I have limited the amount on display to keep the focus on POTS phones. Things like tons of Cell phones not on display, and Marconi DT-75 radios, etc., all ex-Island Tel.

Funny thing about the mobile stuff - I wasn't going to display any in the museum until an Australian visitor suggested I should. Accordingly, I began collecting the early brick and bag phones, and Handi-talkie, etc. They alone have grown into quite a collection.

Well I can't post this on any other thread so here goes, my oldest bricks, Nokia 1610s, 4 out of 7 work!

Would an old mobile sub-forum be acceptable on these hallowed pages mods?

[DavePEI]

Well I can't post this on any other thread so here goes, my oldest bricks, Nokia 1610s, 4 out of 7 work!
Would an old mobile sub-forum be acceptable on these hallowed pages mods?

Basically all the cell phone and radios I have on display are Motorola - in the early days, that is what Island Tel distributed. Roughly, I have them from the earliest 1984 Brick - the one which literally was the size of a brick and weighed darn near as much, then Motorola Bag phones. Fishermen around here loved the bag phones - their higher power meant that they could be used  many miles out to sea.

In fact, a couple of years ago, CBC did a story on the cell  phone, and filmed in the museum, concentrating on the 1984 phone, the original cell phone, DynaTAC 8000X. I have several versions from 1984 to 1987. "The original brick" weighed 2 pounds, offered just a half-hour of talk time for every recharging and sold for $3,995.

Note, re: dates. While the Dynatac started production on 1983, it didn't gain FCC approval until September 21, 1983, and wasn't available to consumers until 1984 giving time for cellular service to be installed in major US cities.

10 years earlier on April 3, 1973 Martin Cooper demonstrated a prototype cell phone in NYC.

Man, could one ever look cool walking down the street talking on a brick! Nowadays, the only reason one would carry one would be for exersise.

Cellular Revolution - 1980's Motorola Promotional Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WUF3yjgGf4

The analog cell phones all worked until Aliant shut down analog service a couple of years ago. The latest cell phone I have on display is about 1995. That is where I cut it off to keep the emphasis on POTS phones, But I have tons more later ones in storage. I also have a small assortment of pagers etc. on display in the same area.

Dave

[twocvbloke]

I've got one of them Nokia 1610 (or is it a 1611? I think it's the latter, not sure!!) somewhere, and worked fine the last time I tried it...

Most of my collection of mobile phones are Motorolas, none of which are Analogue models (that got phased out here bout 1 or 12 years ago in favour of GSM), I did get a couple of ETACS band motorolas at one point, but they were trashed and didn't work at all, so they got scrapped. The only problem with mobile phones is the batteries, you have to keep them separate from the phone or they end up running them down to the point of leakage and corrosion, which ain't good, so what was a good phone ends up being a ruined phone because of the batteries...

Not to mention, it costs more money to pay with them than it does to play with wired telephones, cos you can't get mini transceivers to act as a base-station for analogue or digital phones, at least, not legally cos of the reallocated bands of the spectrum...