Tag: JKL Museum

Photo Exhibit: One Bell System. It works. “One hundred Years of Telephony in America” 1876 – 1976

Photo Exhibit: One Bell System. It works. “One hundred Years of Telephony in America” 1876 – 1976.

We recently acquired a set of 81 AT&T Photo Center photos. We hope you will enjoy this Photo Exhibit

See you at the Southern California Telephone Collectors Show

Museum staff and volunteers are rebuilding the JKL Museum, lost in a devastating fire.

The Southern California Telephone Collectors Show on Saturday, March 19, is your opportunity to bring unique, rare, or unusual telephones and other telephone artifacts for the JKL staff to consider for purchase.

Donations are also appreciated as the museum is a 501(c)(3) not for profit organization.
Of special interest are:
Call Directors, Autovon, Card Dialers, Multiline & Key Equipment, early Wood and Payphones.
Or do you have a telephone collection to sell?

Go to the JKL Museum website: http://jklmuseum.com/wishlist for a list of items they would like to acquire or call (209) 755-4949

Click here for the Southern California Telephone Collectors Show info.

Click here for the show blog. There will be photos posted to the blog on the day of the show.

Code-Com Set

Found this Bell System Code-Com Set. Do you know what it is?
It is actually pretty cool:

According to the BSP “This set provides a means of communicating over telephone lines for persons who
are handicapped through loss of hearing, speech, or sight.”

We wish it were it better shape but guess it will have to do for now. Let us if you have more information about this device or a nicer one to spare.

Code-Com Set

Code-Com Set

This early b&w Bell System News Features photo shows the Code-Com Set.

Code-Com Set
TOUCH-A-PHONE. This is the Code-Com set being developed by Bell Telephone Laboraties and Western Electric. The set, connected to a conventional telephone, will aloow the deaf-blind to “feel” phone messages in vibrations of a finger pad, and the deaf to “see” messages in coded flashes of light. The circular vibrating pad is on the left. Light flashes some from a recess (black rectangle) in the center of the raised portion of the set. The sending key, used like a telegraph key, is on the right.
Photo JE6910 — Touch-a-Phone — Bell System News Features

Advertising about the Code-Com Set can be found here.

Trailer Removal

Last Friday, January 15, 2016 was the day of the trailer removal:

The JKL Museum’s step-by-step emergency switching trailer was damaged beyond repair during the Butte forest fire on September 11 2015.

It was the first, and to this date only, item of ‘debris’ that has been removed from the museum site.
It took almost all day to remove the trailer from its location on to the main road. First it needed to be fitted with ‘new’ tires because one of them was burned away completely during the fire and the other one was exposed to extreme heat. It took a lot of maneuvering to get the trailer on the main road because there is no room to turn around on or near the museum grounds.

The following photos give an impression of the whole operation.

The trailer before the removal started.
The trailer before the removal started.
Putting on 'new' tires.
Putting on ‘new’ tires.
The trailer moved on to the driveway.
The trailer moved on to the driveway.
This truck turned out to be too big to move the trailer.
This truck turned out to be too big to move the trailer.
Hooking on the chains.
Hooking on the chains.
Moving the trailer up on the asphalt road.
Moving the trailer up on the asphalt road.
Hoping it doesn't tumble...
Hoping it doesn’t tumble…
Stay on the road!
Stay on the road!
Keep it coming...
Keep it coming…
Leaving the museum site.
Leaving the museum site.
Left the museum site.
Left the museum site.
Down the hill.
Down the hill.
Halfway down.
Halfway down.
Tight curve.
Tight curve.
Gone...
Gone…
Does it fit?
Does it fit?
Back on the main road.
Back on the main road.
The trailer in better days.
The trailer in better days.
The inside of the trailer before the fire.
The inside of the trailer before the fire.

 

The 1976 Bell System Telephone Book Cover

This week we received a very generous donation of two large original pencil sketches with a total of thirty vignettes by Stanley Meltzoff (1917-2006). The artwork,  created for the 1976 Bell System telephone directory cover,  was inspired by a piece known as the Gossips by Norman Rockwell.
Stanley Meltzhoff’s work has appeared in Saturday Evening Post, Life, Scientific American, National Geographic and Sports Illustrated.

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We are very excited about this donation. It’s a wonderful piece of telephone history.
In the art work, various characters from American history were depicted on the 1976 telephone book cover, each talking on one of the various types of telephones that were designed since Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.
The cover commemorates the 200th birthday of the United States and the 100th anniversary of the telephone. It appeared on more than 184 million Bell System telephone directory covers throughout the U.S.