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Annual Business Meeting
and Visit to the Vintage Telephone Museum

12 JPG photos of this meeting and phone museum tour.

Written by Gary Louie

June 22, 1999

Vice Chair Aurika Hays opened the meeting, and 2 dozen or so attendees introduced themselves.

AES PNW elections were held. A quorum was determined to be present (16 members). Lindsay Smith volunteered to run for a Committee position. Since all positions nominated by the Committee and published in the May mailing were unopposed, a motion for unanimous consent for the entire slate was made, seconded and carried by all 16 members present. One of last year's Committee positions went unfilled. The 1999-2000 PNW Officers will therefore be:

Chair: Aurika Hays
Vice-Chair: Rick Chinn
Secretary: Gary Louie
Treasurer: Dan Mortensen

Committee:
Vince Dayton
Terry Denbrook
Sam Fontaine
Barry James
Bob Moses
Rick Smargiassi
Lindsay Smith

Retiring PNW Treasurer Allen Goldstein gave a Treasurer's Report on Section finances.

Rick Smargiassi announced a tentative September meeting about the new Safeco Field baseball stadium sound system.

Aurika then introduced Don Ostrand, curator for the museum. "Welcome," he said, "to what is probably one of the world's largest hobby shops!" The Vintage Telephone Equipment Museum is housed in spare space in a working US West exchange building in south Seattle near Boeing Field. It was begun in 1985 by the Washington Telephone Pioneers of America. When the Bell System broke up at that time, a lot of telephone switching equipment was surplussed and acquired by the museum.

Not your usual stodgy museum, this one is packed to the ceiling with just about anything related to the telephone industry since its birth. Most items are out in the open for inspection. Certainly there is a huge collection of telephones, ranging from replicas of Bell's first experiments to videophones and cellulars. There is historic test equipment, undersea cable samples, lineman's tools. Working operator panels and crank phones. Home appliances made by Western Electric. Microwave stations. Teletypes. Employee memorabilia. A British call box. And far too much more to list.

But perhaps most amazing is the installation of complete, operational telephone exchange switching systems from the earliest days of direct dialing up until contemporary times. It is thought to be the largest such installation in the world. Standing floor to about 12 foot ceiling, one may observe exactly what happens in the exchange when one "dials" the phone. The mind boggles at the contacts, motors and relays involved. Some of these switches are thought to be perhaps the last working examples of such technology left in the world. Some of them served Seattle phone customers for over 50 years.

Attendees were free to roam the two floors of displays and ask questions of the museum volunteers. The volunteers - most are retired phone company workers - do all the work: acquiring the equipment, repairing and maintaining it, guiding visitors. Curator Ostrand said that phone company needs were taking back about a quarter of their cramped exhibit space. They are formulating plans, which could include building another floor if funding and ownership questions can be worked out.

Our thanks to the museum volunteers that night, Curator Don Ostrand, Lois Beedle, Dick and Beverly Bendicksen, Bob Dickensheets, Bill Dyment, Dave Dintenfass, Don Fagerholm, Ron Smith and Don West. The museum is open Tuesdays or by appointment.

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Last Modified 11/4/2001