Telephone museum reopens in Commack

On a recent Sunday, the Verizon Telephone Pioneers Museum in Commack transported visitors back to a time when telephones were not computers or cameras or gaming devices. At its open house, guests got a firsthand glimpse into the early days of mass communication, spanning nearly 150 years of telephone history.

Opened in 1976 in Huntington Station to celebrate the centennial of the invention of the telephone, the museum, the only one of its kind hosted by Verizon, was founded by Ralf Kraus and Bill Elsassa, both antique telephone aficionados and former New York Telephone employees who have since died. In 1990, the museum moved to the Verizon central office in Commack that also houses its switching equipment.

The family-friendly museum features interactive displays and exhibits ranging from a replica of the first telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell and an intriguing wall phone that hung in President Theodore Roosevelt’s garage at Sagamore Hill, to a 1967 Picturephone and an original floor plank taken from Bell’s laboratory. In all, there are more than 100 models of vintage and replica telephones.

In the museum’s spacious ground floor, children played with a 1977 Snoopy novelty phone and were in awe of an animatronic mannequin of Alexander Graham Bell that speaks. Other displays include pay phones, the first push-button phone, switchboards and early smartphones. Visitors also got an up-close look at antique photos, telephone memorabilia and historical “tools of the trade,” including Bell System-branded wrenches, screwdrivers and pliers. Admission is free.

“History is what shapes us for the future,” said John Stallone of Amityville, museum curator, telephone historian and a retired 27-year Verizon and AT&T employee. “Everything we do today [with telephones] originated from somewhere.”

Volunteer effort

The museum in Commack receives support from the Long Island-based Paumanok Chapter No. 85 of New Vision Pioneers, a national nonprofit made up of current and retired telecommunications workers whose mission includes “answering the call of those in need.” Volunteers participate in charitable activities including food and clothing drives, park cleanups and nursing home visits, said Sonja Dungee, chapter president.

New Vision Pioneers is affiliated with the Denver-based Telephone Pioneers of America, which was founded in 1911 and counted Alexander Graham Bell among its charter members. The Nassau-Suffolk group, Dungee said, hosts fundraisers, accepts private donations and receives grant funding from the Telephone Pioneers for community outreach and museum upkeep.

In an effort to inspire and engage the next generation of visitors, Stallone says, he hopes exhibits spark learning and heighten children’s appreciation of telephone history.

“You can come here and touch things, whereas in other museums, they would be behind glass. You can dial a rotary phone or handle a crank-style phone from the 1800s,” said the father of two. “Young folks today don’t know how to spin the wheel [dial a rotary phone] and make the connection. For kids, this is priceless.”

Christine Raptis, 40, and her son, Lukas, 5, were en route to the grocery store when the New York City high school history teacher noticed a sign advertising the grand reopening of the museum and decided to stop in. “So much has changed,” said Raptis as they strolled through the displays of phones.

“Kids only know about this,” the Commack resident said, as she pulled her smartphone from her jacket pocket and pointed to a wall of vintage pay phones, adding, “They don’t exist anymore.”

“It’s fascinating how far technology has advanced,” agreed Wayne Kunis, 60, a retired hotel worker who lives in Commack, as he gazed in awe at an early 1900s electrical insulation tester that gauges how effectively an electric cable is insulated. “I’m so glad that they kept this stuff preserved, because I’m seeing things I have never seen before.

“Once this stuff is gone, it’s gone.”

‘A different world’

Taylor Lewis, 28, was also visiting the museum for the first time with her 2-month-old son, NáMaré. The Middle Island resident said the museum had piqued her interest because when she was a young girl, her grandmother, a retired New York Telephone directory operator, took her to her office on “Bring Your Child to Work Day.”

“This is a different world,” Lewis said. “This [museum] helps my understanding of how all phones work. Now my phone is my calculator, phone book and camera.”

Lewis and other museum guests marveled at vintage explosion-proof rotary telephones once used in coal mines as well as a 1967 Picturephone, which made video telephone calls and had been a major attraction at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Parked outside the museum, as it is only on fair-weather days, was Stallone’s own green 1967 New York Telephone service truck. He keeps it stocked with the tools and equipment needed to install a home telephone from the era.

The collection of antique and reproduction telephones also highlights a replica of the Liquid Acid Transmitter, over which Alexander Graham Bell spoke the famous words, “Mr. Watson, come here — I want to see you,” after spilling acid on his pants. “This was the first speech spoken over wire,” said Stallone, who was sporting a dark, uniform-style suit and antique New York Telephone identification badge.

“Watson hears this,” he continued in an impassioned tone about Bell’s assistant Thomas Watson, “not through the room, but through the line and comes running into the room, yelling, ‘I heard you, I heard you.’ ”

Stallone explained to museum visitors that the telephone was able to transmit sound by attaching a wire and pin to a flexible drumlike membrane made of animal skin that was set above a tiny cup of an electrically charged water-and-acid solution. When words were spoken into a cone on the device, they caused the membrane to vibrate and move up and down into the liquid, creating an electric current and sending sound waves over the wire to the receiver.

While Bell’s Liquid Acid Transmitter of yesteryear transformed the way people communicated, Stallone said, so has the smartphone of today. “What young kids don’t realize, though, is that with the cellphone, the technology that drives it came from the Bell System in 1946,” he said. “They first introduced a mobile radio-style telephone then. That is the precursor of what we have today.”

Curator’s dream

Stallone, whose favorite telephone is the candlestick phone with a dial, circa 1919, along with color phones popularized in the 1950s, said he first became interested in all things telephone when he was growing up in Great Neck. At 4 years old, he was enthralled with the New York Telephone Co.’s green telephone service trucks that would congregate every morning in front of a deli across from his grandmother’s house in Fresh Meadows, Queens.

“I would ask my grandmother to ask the workers who were stopping for breakfast if they had any scraps they could give me,” he recalled of his desire for bits of discarded electronics and spare parts. “Later on, when I found out my uncle worked for the telephone company, I would ask him for scraps.”

Over the years, Stallone acquired a prized hard hat; leftover twisted, colored wires; a tack hammer; and flashlight. “I was the happiest kid on the block,” he said. “The concept of being able to put something to your ear and speak to someone far away, to me, as a little kid, was amazing. It [the telephone] had this magical mystique that drew me in.”

As the years passed, his passion for telephone history grew. When other kids were playing pickup basketball, the 11-year-old Stallone was playing with phones at the museum, where he met Kraus in 1981 and more than three-dozen retired telephone company employees-turned-volunteers.

“I was like a sponge soaking up the stories from the volunteers,” recalled Stallone. “They used to get together and have coffee and cake and tell stories about their work at the company.”

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the museum to close its doors and put on hold its mission to educate the public about telephone history. However, even before the outbreak, Stallone said, the museum had struggled to attract visitors.

Through the grand reopening, though, Stallone aims to change that.

Museum's future

“My goal is to keep this museum” — which he calls Long Island’s “best-kept secret” — “going for the next 30 years,” he said, “and to bring more people in and teach them.”

To help revive interest in the museum, Stallone and his sons, John Mauro Stallone, 19, a Farmingdale State College freshman, and Vincent Stallone, 14, an eighth-grader at Notre Dame Catholic School in New Hyde Park, have taken to social media, posting photos of the exhibits on Instagram and Facebook. The elder Stallone says he is also mentoring his sons to lead tours of the museum, and he hopes to interest active and retired telephone employees in volunteering.

“I want to bring life into the museum,” said Stallone, who has launched a monthly “changing exhibit room.” This month, it spotlights the evolution of the cellphone, tracing the birth of mobile telephone service to the present day.

He also plans an exhibit on the evolution of color telephones. “Before 1954, all phones were black,” he explained. “You had no choice in the color, unless you were a member of high society.” He said he wants to attract new audiences and continue to offer private guided tours for school and other youth groups.

Stallone’s primary goal is to ensure that the telephones’ past remains in good hands and that the museum lives on. He hopes his children, who are also telephone history buffs, will continue to be invested in the museum and one day take over the role of curator.

“My kids grew up here,” he said of the museum. “It has been a family affair ever since they were young.”

Visit the museum

Verizon Telephone Pioneers Museum, 455 Commack Rd., Commack, is open the first Sunday of each month, except holidays, from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission and parking are free. For information, visit the museum’s Instagram page @longislandtelephonemuseum. The next open house, on May 7, features an exhibit called “Behind the Coin Slot, the Inner Workings of the Payphone.”