Do you know how your cell phone works? When you speak into the microphone, your voice is converted into an electric signal. A microchip in your phone modulates radio waves using that electric signal, and the invisible radio waves travel through the air until they ping off of a cell phone tower, sending your voice to whoever it is you’re talking to. That sounds pretty complicated! What did we do before the wonders of modern technology? The answer is right in front of you!

This small, nondescript building was the original telephone office for Garrison. Before cell phone towers and radio waves, a telephone call required sound waves created by your voice to be converted into electric energy. The energy traveled through telephone wires to reach its destination where it was turned back into sound waves. But with a profusion of wires to travel through, how did the electric energy get to the intended phone? Why, with the help of a switchboard and an operator, of course, housed in the telephone office! This particular telephone office was in use here in Garrison until the late 1930s.

How about knowing which number to dial? Are you old enough to remember using a phone book? Our cell phones today make it possible for us to never even have to memorize a phone number, keeping track of our contacts on an alphabetized list. The phone numbers we don’t know can be easily looked up on a web browser directly on our phones. Here in the telephone office, switchboard operators would sometimes use a directory, like the one on display from 1916, to correctly connect calls.

The ways in which we communicate have changed enormously over the years with innovations like email, social media, and video calls. To some children, a rotary dial telephone may seem as antiquated as the Wright Brothers’ airplane. This telephone office stands here in Heritage Park to not only remind us of how much the times have changed, but also to spark our imaginations. How much might our technology change in the next one hundred years? Maybe we’ll be making calls to Mars!