Electromechanical exchanges
Relay cabinets that connected calls before computers โ and they run.
Both are small volunteer-run technical museums in Rotterdam with complementary subjects: this one personal communication, the other broadcasting. If the field interests you, combine them โ but check both sets of hours in advance, as they are narrow and may not align.
Technically minded teenagers yes, and the working machines hold attention. Young children less so, as the content depends on explanation and context. With a family in Rotterdam, the maritime museum or the working port itself are clearer choices.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet โ be the first.
A museum of the history of telecommunications, showing a collection of telephones, telegraph equipment and switching exchanges gathered over decades. The subject is broader than it appears: the displays cover the journey from the nineteenth-century telegraph to the mechanical telephone to vast automatic exchanges to the beginnings of the mobile phone. This is the history of how people became able to speak across distance, a change no less consequential than the railway. Its strongest material is the automatic exchanges: great cabinets of electromechanical relays that connected calls before computers, many of them still working, so you hear the switching and see the movement. A photograph cannot give you that. It should be clear that this is a small specialist museum run by volunteers, with very limited hours possibly restricted to a few days or by appointment, and labelling primarily in Dutch. It lies outside central Rotterdam and needs transport. Check before going.
Relay cabinets that connected calls before computers โ and they run.
The whole journey in one place across a century and a half.
Speaking across distance changed the world just as much.
Rotterdam, outside the centre