Welcome, And Thanks
Welcome to Telephonearchive.com, a resource for anyone who's curious about old phones. I built this site in 2006 and it ran unchanged for nineteen years. I've come back to it in 2026 to try to make it better.
The site currently consists of three elements: 1) the database (of phones, PDFs, etc); 2) the game (a way to engage people in learning about phones and history), and 3) the timeline. I'm hoping to keep improving all three, and to better integrate them together.
I got into antique phones around 2000 because I love technology, design, and history. And I get to use them all in working on Telephone Archive: I'm using AI to write the code, doing the site design myself, and diving back into history (fun).
But I also love the people aspect of phones. Twenty years ago I got all my information about phones from people (phone collectors), not the web (check out TCI, whose members I’ve learned a ton from over the years). Some of those folks are still around, but many are gone. I want to see if AI can help organize and preserve some of this knowledge, while keeping it as human as possible. Without human creativity, judgement, and inspiration, AI seems pretty worthless.
Speaking of people, here's all the collectors who’ve helped me - now and in 2006 - by contributing photos, documents and advice. Thanks, and a big lighter salute to all of you:
Tom Adams, Bob Alexander, John Andrews, Walt Aydelotte, Rob Baxter, Alex Bell, Ell Bennett, Bruce Bianchi, Terry Biddlecombe, Pete Blanshard, Bud Breslin, Dick Capon, Keith Cheshire, Roger Conklin, Russ Cowell, Pete D'Acosta, Mike DeGeer, Doug Duffy, Remco Enthoven, Dick Erickson, Frank Franowsky, Hal Galvin, Ed Gerson, Gary Goff, Scott Greyerbiehl, Dave Gruger, Dennis Hallworth, Hugh Hamilton, Tom Herwer, Steve Hilsz, Tom Iverson, John Jenkins, Ray Kotke, Dave Kuns, Albert LaFrance, John La Rue, Jeff Lamb, Larry Larned, Odis Levrier, Gerry Maira, David Massey, Wayne Merit, Jim Morales, Brad Morrison, Tom Mullis, Tommy Mulloy, Mike Neale, Jerry Paxton, Scotty Poling, Jim Prather, Marie Prewett, Paul Rauth, Mark Redmond, Richard Rose, Frank Ruffino, Steve Schack, Stan Schrier, John Shriver, Jonathan Sowers, Gary Stathatos, Jim Stettler, Alec Switzer, Wally Tubbs, John Tipo-Hui, Gerald Uhlan, Chuck Vasquez, Tom Vaughn, Jeremy Walters, Edward Whalen, Jerry Williams, Ekkehart Willms, Paul Wills, Larry Wolff, and Jack Worley.
Please enjoy the site. To reach me, try dmargulius at that google email service.
Dave
P.S. Most of the images on the site are from collectors who contributed them or from commerce sites where people were selling/auctioning the phones. Some of the writing is my own, some is from Wikipedia, and some has been AI-generated (like the non-Wikipedia company overviews, and the timeline). See this list of the web reference resources that I've used, and that (separately) AI has used, while writing content for the site.