E.H. Danner Museum of Telephony

Purpose

The E.H. Danner Virtual Museum is a site dedicated to telephone history. The site features the telephones from the Danner Museum of Telephony in San Angelo, Texas. By viewing this website you will see early telephones and how technology has changed through the years. You will learn how phones work and the impact they have made on people’s lives. You can investigate the telephone’s role in world events. Throughout the site you will meet people that were involved in the industry. After visiting the site we hope you will imagine what a phone of the future might look like or how people will communicate in the future and what changes are still to come.

Navigating the site

The E.H. Danner Virtual Museum is made up of nine sections. These sections contain photos of telephones, people and stories relevant to that time period in telephone history.

Communication before Telephones

Early Communication, 1870-1900

First Steps and Early Phones, 1900-1910

The Telephone Goes Long Distance, 910-1920

Progress and Changes, 1920-1930

The Telephone Goes to War, 1930-1950

The Struggle to Keep Up, 1950-1970

Air, Land and Sea: The Telephone Everywhere, 1970-1990

What Will the Future Bring? 1990 and beyond

Printing and View Instructions

This site is best viewed with the screen resolution at 1024 x 768, and printed using landscape mode for the main pages and portrait for text files.

Credits

The E.H. Danner Virtual Museum has been a collaborative effort between Verizon, the Dr. Ralph R. Chase West Texas Collection and the Information Technology Department at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. Special thanks go to the members of the GTE Pioneers Club who were instrumental in the creation of the site. Two books were used extensively in the research of the site:

The Heritage of Time: The People and Times of GTE Southwest, 1876-1988 by Larry Johnson

The History of GTE: The Evolution of One of America’s Great Corporations by Thomas McCarthy