Bryant Pond Switchboard

Once upon a time, every telephone call had to go through a switchboard operator. In 1983, the Bryant Pond Telephone Company switched off the last commercial switchboard in the United States. For 31 years, Elden and Barbara Hathaway had operated the company out of their living room in rural Bryant Pond, Maine, using first one switchboard and then two, as the company grew to serve 481 customers.  Next to a very large picture of one of these switchboards we displayed a smartphone, rotary phone, and telegraph machine to further illustrate the rapid changes in communication technology over the last century.

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