Before the internet and Facebook and Twitter, there was a primitive social networking apparatus called the telephone switchboard. It so happens the oldest existing switchboard was created right here in Meriden over 130 years ago. But what happened to it has been a mystery.

Until now.

After the first words were spoken and received by telephone on March 10, 1876, there remained the problem of linking one phone to any other. This challenge was solved by two men working independently. From a July 9, 1993 article in the Record-Journal:

"On January 28, 1878 in New Haven, George W. Coy gave a demonstration of a telephone switchboard he had invented. Among the spectators was telegraph operator Ellis B. Baker Sr. of Meriden, who had also been pondering how to make a telephone exchange. Coy willingly gave advice, and supplied Baker with the drawings and materials."

Back in Meriden, Baker asked William C. Homan, a young machinist at the Miller Company, to make two telephone receivers. Homan installed one phone in his house on Meriden's Crown Street, the other in the house of an unknown relative or neighbor, possibly on Curtis Street (a year later Homan moved to Curtis Street). These were the first phones in Meriden and among the earliest in the world.

Baker then went to work figuring out how to connect multiple phones. With the help of Roger D. Blish of the Miller Company, Baker built his own switchboard modeled in large measure after Coy's. It was finished and operational in just three days, on January 31, 1878. The Baker switchboard was mounted on a board of black walnut and included teapot cover knobs manufactured by the Miller Company. It had a capacity of seven circuits.

Subsequently, Coy's original switchboard was destroyed in a fire, leaving the Meriden instrument the oldest in existence.

The first subscribers to the new Meriden phone service were the A.L. Stevens real estate firm on Colony Street (where the switchboard was mounted), the Amos Ives coal and wood office, the Meriden Curtain Fixture Company on Broad Street, the Edward Miller Company, and Lawyer George A. Fay's Broad Street office. The phones were connected with brass wire strung between wooden poles and attached to porcelain knobs.

Within a month, 47 Meriden people were subscribed to the local phone service.

In researching the history of old Curtis Street, I wondered what became of the actual switchboard. The 1993 Record-Journal article suggested that it was on display at the Smithsonian in the early 1990s.

I called the Smithsonian and with very little hassle was redirected to Mr. Hal Wallace in charge, so to speak, of the Division of Electricity. He said the Meriden switchboard was indeed at the Smithsonian in the late 1980s. In 1990 it was then returned to AT & T headquarters, possibly in New Jersey but he wasn't sure.

With the many mergers and changes to the telephone industry I thought it a very long shot that I would find the whereabouts of the old switchboard. And who knew if it was still around at all?

Online I found numerous contacts for AT & T, none that would obviously lead to an old phone invention. I started with the AT & T news divisions in San Antonio, Texas. There was an email contact for a Mr. Michael Coe. With low expectations I sent him a note. Just two days later I received a reply from William D. Caughlin, the Corporate Archivist at the AT & T Archives and History Center. He plainly wrote that his "associate George Kupczak manages the history center in Warren, NY, which houses the Meriden switchboard. I'm attaching a photo of it as well as the corresponding item record in our database. What else would you like to know?"

It is not known when AT & T acquired the Meriden switchboard. It was already part of the Bell System Historical Museum in January 1925, as an article from the time shows the board in a display case. Eventually, the museum collection (established in New York City in 1913, the same year my grandfather Fred Radcliffe was born - he would join Bell Labs as a scientist in the late 1930s) merged in 1987 with several others (AT & T, Bell Labs and Western Electric) to form the AT & T Archives in New Jersey.

Today the last remaining piece of the switchboard is preserved in an environmentally controlled, fire-proof vault along with other extremely rare telephone items in Warren, NJ. It is only taken out for special exhibitions. And it's not useful for sending text messages.