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Connections Museum

@connections.museum
785 followers 10 following 31 posts

Featuring vintage telephone & communications equipment dating to 1885. Fans of relays, electromechanical devices, soldering, and the Bell System. Home to the world's only working Panel Switch.

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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 02/10/2026
We are in the news :) southseattleemerald.org/arts-culture...
southseattleemerald.org
At a Georgetown Museum, Young Volunteers Answer the Call to Preserve Phone History
Preserving old phones takes more than saving the equipment. At a Georgetown museum, younger volunteers are learning skills that could otherwise disappear.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 11/09/2026
I took the time today to fix this hostile design so that y’all don’t have to deal with it. 😤
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 17/08/2026
Additionally, official company internal correspondence was always typed, and assigned a number prefixed with a letter code, like PEL, CD, PIL, A, B, KS, TR, X, etc.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 17/08/2026
It's hard to say with certainty since we don't have a master record of forms. My scientific wild-ass guess is that this form was intended to be used for brief interdepartmental memos. Customer correspondence would have been more official--typed, on proper letterhead.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 15/08/2026
Like all telecom equipment, it comes up in alarm, crying its little eyes out for mommy to come help it.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 15/08/2026
We've got a heartbeat! The rectifier is online at our new switchroom in Seattle. No load yet, but that will come soon enough.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 13/08/2026
There is a whole case of these tools and they’re priceless. Each on made in small batches to do exactly this job.
A hand holding out two intricate tools made of steel. Beside the hand and tools is a wooden box. The label of the box indicates that its contents are more bespoke tools.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 13/08/2026
It’s panel switch maintenance week, and that means using bespoke Western Electric tools and jigs from the 1920s to check concentricity and alignment of vertical drives!
A closeup of an old machine showing a vertical drive shaft with a Starret dial indicator pressed against a driving element.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 14/07/2026
Welcome! Step into my office.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 09/07/2026
They’re plastic. I can get you some measurements on Friday if that’s ok?
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 09/07/2026
Anybody in our orbit good at CAD/CAM stuff and have a lil free time for a project? I’d like to get these covers for our 5XB made. I can get exact measurements but I do not have the ability to turn them into something that a manufacturer wants :/
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 09/07/2026
Soup!
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 19/06/2026
Dual-wielding chain hoists, and using the intergalactic death ray to make sure things are level. The new switchroom in Seattle is coming together!
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 16/06/2026
youtu.be/SzGaWZ8COfk New video, in case you haven't already had it pop up in your recs!
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 02/05/2026
for those of you at VCF PNW this weekend, yep, we are open tomorrow (Sunday)
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Reposted by Connections Museum
Michael 🎃. Levy @professorlevy.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
hmm, sorry, i'm going to make Bell rims now, you can't stop me Saul
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 07/03/2026
Oh I didn’t know HistoryLink was on here! This is very exciting!
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Reposted by Connections Museum
HistoryLink.org @historylink.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
#OnThisDay in 1883, a telephone exchange started in Seattle with 90 subscirbers. Henry Yesler reportedly asked whether or not "one could swear over that thing." www.historylink.org/File/875
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 03/03/2026
💯 some patent lawyer was like “ok they don’t pay me enough for this”
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 03/03/2026
oh my god, the actual text starts on page 239
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 03/03/2026
unhinged patent filing for the no. 5 crossbar. there’s over 100 pages of just this.
a page from a patent document. it looks like someone was playing a joke on the patent attorneys
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 03/03/2026
the most important step in setting up my new toolbox
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Galactica Actual @1xb.co · 21/02/2026
current mood
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Funranium (AKA Phil Broughton) @funranium.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
New treasure get!
A faux brass sign that reads “No job is so important and no service is so urgent that cannot take time to perform our work safely.  Bell System”
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 17/02/2026
We are packing up the JKL Museum switch room for shipment to Seattle, which means that I’m spending the day crawling through the ceiling.
A selfie of a girl standing on a ladder. Many cables snake around her. A distant photo of a friend smiling and waving while standing on a ladder.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 12/02/2026
one of our coziest girls, in her natural habitat
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 12/02/2026
Some doofus in the youtube comments section was big mad that the museum's account has pronouns listed. I didn't even know we did, but now I'm keeping them there, just to be a tar-pit to catch the next asshole who wanders through. Trans rights are human rights, motherfucker.
a screenshot of youtube, showing the connections museum homepage. the name of the account is visible, along with the pronouns "she/her/hers"
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Reposted by Connections Museum
Galactica Actual @1xb.co · 12/01/2026
girlfriends, on the other hand, have teletypes.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 17/12/2025
Though to be fair, at the time, Western wasn’t actively manufacturing these objects. So the ad is truthful.
A picture of a western electric, junior electric range
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 17/12/2025
Oh yeah, Western Electric? Tell me more about how you don’t make washing machines and toasters.
A 1950’s western electric advertisement, depicting, telephone equipment being raised into a newly constructed telephone exchange. Several curious people are looking on from a distance.A close-up of text from the Western electric advertisement. The text reads as follows. “ Making telephone equipment for the Bell system is Western electric‘s job and has been for 68 years. We don’t make toasters or washing machines or electric ranges. We make telephone equipment. Good equipment that helps give you good service at low cost.”A picture of a western electric toasterA picture of a western electric washing machine
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 24/11/2025
Yes please! I’ll be out of town but we are open on Sundays from 10-3. Feel free to drop by, give it to a docent and say “Sarah said to come and donate this” and it will get taken care of <3
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 09/11/2025
This is a great idea. (Pear Williams, 7up, twist of citrus)
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 09/11/2025
etaoin shrdlu dolor sit amet
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 02/10/2025
Wish we could but right now we’ve got a good thing going with CottonBureau, and spinning up another merch relationship would be complicated. I’m sorry it’s so damn expensive to buy a silly shirt :(
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lycamania ☉∇ ☣ 🏜️ @wolf.moda · 02/10/2025
nobody talking about sacred machines is talking about telephony equipment and they ought to be, like all of this metal was directly connecting your ear to someone's gaping maw and into literal orbit and back while simultaneously handling hundreds more. and it sounds like this it's like a critter
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Sansa Sandisk @cheatlines.co · 23/08/2025
telephony
watermarked stock image of witchcraft supplies (salt pentagram, crystal, candle)
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Cait 🦇 @gendercoffin.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
HEY IT'S THE CONNECTIONS MUSEUM ON BLUESKY They're the ones with the amazing 3ESS telephone exchange that I discovered on Youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=k865... Give them a follow!
youtube.com
Booting up the 3ESS
YouTube video by Connections Museum
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 16/11/2024
Also, I know we haven't released any new videos in *ages*. I'm really sorry. I haven't stopped traveling since June. I've got a script written though, so filming should start soon.
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Connections Museum @connections.museum · 16/11/2024
Heyo, it's us, the telephone weirdos. Also on the fediverse tacobelllabs.net/@connections
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