CMS:Outline of the Connections Museum
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Connections Museum:
The Connections Museum is a museum that collects, maintains, and displays objects related to connecting people to each other, most notably telephones and telephone switching systems.
City-scale telephone switches
The museum contains several operational city-scale switching systems, most of which were originally installed in cities in the Pacific Northwest:
- a Western Electric 355 A Strowger Step-by-Step (SXS) switch
- a Western Electric Panel switch from the Rainier/Parkway Exchange
- a Western Electric No. 1 Crossbar (1XB) switch from the ?? exchange
- a North Electric CX-100 from the Battleship California, towns of Wilkeson and Lester, and Camp David and Camp Pigott in Monroe, Washington
- a Western Electric No. 5 Crossbar (1XB) switch from the Mercer Exchange
- a Western Electric 3ESS switch from the ?? exchange in Crosby, WA
- a Nortel DMS-10 switch from the ?? exchange in Huntsville, AL
Business-scale telephone systems
The museum contains several smaller scale manual and automatic switching systems:
- a collection of private branch exchanges
- a collection of private automatic branch exchanges
- a collection of key systems
- a low voltage switchboard
Telephone exhibits
The museum contains several collections of different types of telephones:
- a comprehensive collection of phones throughout history
- a collection of AT&T's Design Line phones
- a collection of payphones
- a mobile phone display
Telephone adjacent exhibits
The museum contains exhibits of devices, tools, and infrastructure that is directly or indirectly related to telephony:
- an early telephone history display, including a working telegraph and replicas of experimental transmitters
- AT&T Long Lines microwave transmission equipment from several stations in the Pacific Northwest
- a power board used to control and monitor power used by telephone switches
- a collection of appliances manufactured by Western Electric, the main manufacturer of Bell System equipment
- a collection of telecommunications engineer tools and Picturephones
- a phone lines construction display
Other telecommunications equipment
In addition to telephony, the museum covers other forms of telecommunications such as the transmission of text and data:
- a collection of Teletype brand teleprinters
- a collection of computers from the 1980s to 2000s