It was really interesting for me to see how the phone has progressed over the years to get to where it is today. The telephone museum was nothing like I thought it would be.
One of the first phones used in the 1800s weighed 10.5lbs! The old movie favorites “Candlestick Phones” were next on the tour. These phones were made of nickel and cost $8.00 in 1895. Eventually these phones were made cheaper when they switched to using brass instead of nickel. If you lived in a well off family, in 1900, you started to have phones. Vanity phones started to come out and be popular in hotel lobbies and train stations. You now see phone booths and pay phones in restaurants, gas stations, outside and most other public places. In 1905 though they were only found in a drug store in Kansas. Of course there have just been more and more advances since then. You have your spin to dial phones, the phones with cords, phone without the cords and then the first cell phones.
Last year I went to pick up my brother from school. He was in the 6th grade at Westgate Elementary. As all of the kids walked, over half of them pulled out cell phones to see where their rides are. These kids are barely old enough to remember their own phone number. Now, the coolest thing is to have a cell phone that’s really thin but has the Internet, email, music, games and anything else you can imagine. The first phone weighed ten and a half pounds, now they weigh less than a pound. People used to have to sit and operate the phones 24 hours a day. Computers take care of a lot of the work today. This museum visit was interesting just to see how far we have come in such a short amount of time.