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Exhibits at our Museum
It's common to find "Don't Touch" signs in museums - unless, of course, you're visiting the Museum of Independent Telephony in Abilene, Kansas. Instead, more than a dozen interactive sites at this museum encourage the 20,000 annual visitors to "Please Touch" as they familiarize themselves with pieces of telecommunications history.

A Wonderphone, a Hush-a-Phone, an Aqua phone and a "mother-in-law" phone are all on display. Oak two-boxers are the foundation of an evolution exhibit that includes candlestick phones, a potbelly phone, a silver-dollar pay phone and even a little pink Princess. Showcased artifacts cover 140 years of telephone technology, including a collection of America's earliest telephones on permanent loan from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The Museum of Independent Telephony also tells the story of C.L. Brown, whose independent Brown Telephone Company of Abilene, Kansas, grew to become the telecommunications company known today as Sprint.

The extensive use of photographic images lets the visitor look into the past to see linemen work their way across America, setting poles in holes dug by hand and camping in tents on the plains. Visitors also watch as operators learn complex switchboards, take their daily group exercises outdoors and serve as the "Hello Girl." Operators were the heartbeat of many a rural community.

The story of the rapid-fire spread of telephone technology is told in two theatres. The Dee Adams Theatre traces voice communication back to Alexander Graham Bell's earliest telephones, and the Sprint Theatre gives visitors a glimpse into the telecommunication industry's open-ended future.

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