Visit The Telephone Museum in 2023!
The museum is open July through September on Saturdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and other days by appointment or chance. To ensure our volunteer guides can accommodate your group, please schedule your tour in advance by contacting us at switchboard@nemot.org or 207-667-9491. Include your name, phone or email, and the number of people in your party.
Admission: $10 per adult, $5 per child. Ask about discounts for seniors and groups of 10 or more.
The Telephone Museum is at 166 Winkumpaugh Road, Ellsworth, Maine. Click HERE for a Google map.
Exhibits
The museum is home to a sizable collection of switches, switchboards, telephones, tools, schematics, photographs, and other items of telecommunications history. Both the Bell system and independent telephone companies are represented in our exhibits, many of which include working equipment that functions just as it did years ago when communities in Maine, New England, and the rest of the world were served by a wired telephone network. Click these links (PDFs) to read about some of our exhibits.
The History of Independent Telephone Companies in Maine
Manual Switchboards The Strowger Automatic
The North Electric All-Relay System Crossbar Systems
Future exhibits could include the entire Clinton C.O. (the last Step-by-Step system in Maine); a (partial) panel system from Brownsville, Brooklyn, NY; an Ericsson AGF500 from Mollendo, Peru; and a number of XY switches such as those used by the Unity (Maine) Telephone Company, all now in storage. And many more exhibits from the museum’s collections are possible: a building dedicated to switchboards; an exhibit on Telstar and the receiving station once located in Andover, Maine; an outdoor exhibit on pole line construction, including a hiking trail on museum grounds. We can bring these historic switches and other equipment back to life with your support.
Things To Do
- Bring a box lunch and enjoy it at one of our picnic tables before your tour begins.
- Learn to be a switchboard operator for real hands-on history.
- Find out why we “dial” a number, even on our cell phones.
- Meet the great-granddaddy of all computers, and ask to make a call with it.
- Drive past the museum on the Winkumpaugh (Wink-um-paw) Road to the top of Austin Hill for a beautiful view across working blueberry barrens.
- Visit downtown Ellsworth, shop and dine – and talk about your day at The Telephone Museum!
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