You'll Have New Respect For The Phone In Your Pocket
 

That slick iPhone or amazing Android of yours is just the latest frontier of the wondrous telephone. But do you know how your cell phone actually works? Or did you know that the first pay phones were placed in the men's restrooms of fine hotels? Or that, as of 2009, pay phones themselves are no longer being manufactured?

 

The answers to these-and lots of other phone questions can be found in one of the most unique museums found anywhere: the Telephone Museum of New Mexico. (In fact, the staff here at the Museum report that "This is cool!" are usually the most uttered words by visitors, who are typically surprised that something they take for granted-the phone-has such a fun and interesting history.)

 

Housed in a four-floor space in a historic building in downtown Albuquerque, the museum offers as much history about New Mexico as it does about the beautiful technology of the telephone. The museum's hands-on Learning Center will show you a wide variety of interesting information, like how coin-operated phones work, and what 911 operators are required to do during emergency phone calls.

 

You'll also learn fun facts of history about Alexander Graham Bell (he didn't intend to be an inventor; his goal had been to become a musician) and the American workforce (in the early 1900s, women were not allowed to work if they were married). And did you know that a switchboard was used to warn of the attack by Pancho Villa on the town of Columbus, N.M. in 1916? You'll learn the details as you see the actual switchboard-which is on display here!

 

The museum, which opened in 1997, also has a myriad of photographs, historical displays, and literature from the earliest times of the telephone industry. Of course, some of the most interesting and curious items are the phones themselves, more than 100 of which are on display, from party-line phones, to rotary dial models, to military field phones, and even the first portable phones.

 

There's even a Resource Center in the museum, containing historical, social and technical publications that go back more than a century-including actual telephone directories from the early 1900s.

 

There are also six interactive audio stations throughout the museum, all with short clips filled with interesting facts and stories that are sure to hold the attention of visitors of all ages. And don't forget the museum gift shop, stocked with unique telephone memorabilia, gifts, jewelry and books you won't find anywhere else.