Local Video
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| The calling: Hung up on telephones |
By: ARIEL EMERY, News Editor
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Posted: Friday, January 16, 2009 8:22 pm
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Craig Dunton had to promise his wife he would only collect one of each model of telephone.
To the untrained eye, the third of his stores that live in the St. Olaf College Telecommunications Department don’t appear to meet that pledge. Two custom-built shelves in a conference room display rows of seemingly identical phones in a rainbow of colors.
But Dunton can rationalize his collection.
One of the early dial phones lacks pound and number-sign buttons.
One has circular buttons, another square ones.
Some are back-lit by LED, some by other forms of technology, others not at all.
Between the office, house, garage and barn, the 56-year-old estimates he owns 300 phones.
That doesn’t include the telephone ads, toy telephone trucks, switchboards, TV and film clips relating to telephones ... you get the picture.
Alexander Graham Bell’s invention has been an interest of Dunton’s since he took a job as an installer with New Jersey Bell in 1970.
“I’ve always liked electronics and stuff,” Dunton said of his childhood. He initially took the installer job as a stopgap before beginning life as an electrician.
Back in that day, all telephones on the Bell grid were company property. His job was to install the devices and make any repairs necessary first in New Jersey and later with Northwestern Bell in southern Minnesota.
It was along his journeys with Bell and later as he owned a telephone company in Waseca and Owatonna — later purchased by what’s now Hickory Tech — that he acquired most of his pieces. The rest are donations; only a handful were purchases.
Among the phones on display in the Telecommunications department, where Dunton is director, is the set that the Dunton family used when Craig was a child. Lowell-7-3858, he remembers. It was the type of phone where the user lifted the handset, signaling to the operator that they wanted to place a call — like when Mayberry residents called “Sarah,” for “Andy Griffith Show” fans.
Also along the shelf are some in a series of designer phones the Bell company rented out — Dunton has the advertising poster hanging in his own office. With the “Erico,” callers picked up the vertical-standing handset and found the rotary dial on the bottom. Another model was almost a sculpture, with the device making an O-shape.
Dozens of cellular phones are also grouped together in the office, from the “brick”-style boxy model of the ‘90s to models still in use.
“When you just get done with it, it’s absolute junk,” Dunton said most people believe. “And why would you need it?”
But people believed the same thing about the oldest models of phones with wooden bases, which are now collectible, Dunton says. He believes the same might be true of what’s in use today to collectors of the future.
All of these items, Dunton hopes, might someday be able to live in a museum where they’ll be available for people to get a hands-on history of the telephone industry. But funding for such a facility will be difficult to come by, he realizes. One of his favorite such places is the Telephone Museum of New Mexico in Albuquerque, which inhabits an old AT&T operator building.
He’s been there more than once, he says with a smile.
For the time being, Dunton and his colleagues are working to preserve Northfield’s telephone history through writing. Carol Roecklein, department coordinator, has been spearheading, researching and writing booklets based on old newspaper articles for the past two years with the help of student worker Ellyn Arevalo and others. The first of the two booklets already complete ends with a profile of Dunton and his career.
“I would not call (Dunton’s interest) an obsession,” Roecklein said, “I would call it a passion. ... He loves his work. I have never met a person more passionate about his work than Craig.”
The booklets can be obtained by calling 786-3041 or e-maliing telecom@stolaf.edu.
SAY IT OLD-SCHOOL
Ever heard TV characters calling a “Klondike 5” number?
Telephone numbers used to begin with an exchange name, where the first two letters of the name now translate to the corresponding digits.
• 645 exchanges could be said “Niagara 5”
• 663 exchanges could be said “Northfield 3”
For example, the Northfield News can be reached at Niagara-5-5615.
Click here for a link to Ma Bell’s officially recommended exchange names from 1955 to learn to say other numbers old-school.
— Ariel Emery can be reached at aemery@northfieldnews.com or 645-1115. |
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