Vol. 12, No. 1
November 1999
Editorial: Seduced by a "First”
Nina Wormbs wins Robinson Prize
Information Networks and Urban Spaces
Book Review:
Science in Public
Lemelson Center Fellows Program
News of the Field:
Printing History on the Web
What can "Old Technologies" Teach us about Digital Culture?
Recent and Upcoming Conferences
EXTRA!
Telephone Collectors International
SHOT Session Query: Mechanical to Electrical
Telephone Collectors International (TCI) brings together telephone collectors, hobbyists, and historians helping to preserve the history of the telecommunications industry through the collecting of telephones and telephone related material. By publishing articles on telephone history, equipment, and reviews of early books and publications in its newsletter Singing Wires, TCI serves both collecting and historical goals.
Individual interests range from the restoration of early wooden sets to the preservation of electro-mechanical switching technology to books and ephemera related to the telephone industry. The membership represents all manner of professions both related and unrelated to the telecommunications industry.
TCI also publishes a specialized newsletter called the Switchers Quarterly that features central office, PBX, and key equipment. Switcher’s Quarterly features historical research, schematics, circuit descriptions, and other technical information.
TCI also sponsors two major historic telephone exhibits a year, open to the public. The exhibits, or “telephone shows,” serve as a means of bringing together those who share an interest in historic telephony.
Telephone Collectors International has been a partner in the sponsorship of the International Telecommunications History Symposia. The Symposia, attended by telephone collectors, members of the academic community and representatives of the telephone industry, have served as a unique opportunity for these diverse groups of people to share their mutual interests in the history of the telecommunications industry.
The very informative TCI web site can be found at <www.voicenet.com/~tciplace>. Among other things, here you can find the only copy of “The 2B Regrettor” on the web. This 1930s era Depression-era political satire was a parody of the official, and quite serious, Bell Telephone Practices. Check it out as TCI’s 1999 April Fool’s offering to the Internet.
For information contact Paul McFadden, Telephone Collectors International, 3207 East Bend Drive, Algonquin, IL 60102-9664; (847) 658-7844; fax (847) 658-9360; <singwires@aol.com>
