Almost six months after the Butte Forest fire the museum cleanup started last Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Below are several photos that show the progress made until last Friday.
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Category: Updates
Articles categorized “updates” will appear on the Updates page.
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.
This early b&w Bell System News Features photo shows the 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.
Starlite AE 182
Recently a 1968 Starlite AE 182 model was donated to us. It has a electroluminescent dial ring that is powered by 110 VAC cord right into the phone. Guess you would not want to use this setup on the edge of your bathtub… The Starlite 182 model was Automatic Electric’s answer to Western Electric’s Princess telephone.
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 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.
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.
Early Touch Tone dial
Today we discovered this early Touch Tone dial, dated March 1966.
It is mounted in a Western Electric card dialer which has seen better days.
Can you spot what makes it special?
Early Touch Tone dial
See you at the San Jose Telephone Show – This Saturday – November 21
See you at the San Jose Telephone Show – This Saturday – November 21
For more information about the San Jose Telephone Show:
http://telephonecollector.
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The San Jose Telephone Collectors Show on Saturday, November 21, is your
opportunity to bring unique, rare, or unusual telephones and other
telephone artifacts for the JKL2 staff to consider for purchase and/or
donation.
THANK YOU!
Thank You collector community and friends of the JKL Museum. The outpouring of support we have received in this difficult time has been overwhelming. It was a big loss for us and for telephone history and we are still reeling from it. We are in the process of answering all your emails and messages, a very large task for our volunteers and staff.
As plans for the future of the JKL Museum unfold, we will keep you informed.
Your support is appreciated and valued by all of us.
John K. La Rue
JKL Museum – Fire Update
JKL Museum – Fire Update 09/17
It has only been 6 days since the Butte forest fire destroyed the American Museum of Telephony aka the JKL Museum of Telephony.
The site is still smoking and fire crews were still putting out hot spots today.
It is our intention to rebuild the museum and this involves lots of careful planning which will take some time.
In the mean time we would like to thank everyone for their ongoing support and please check our homepage at http://jklmuseum.com/ to see how you can help the JKL Museum of Telephony.