Allen Tupper True Mural, The Wings of Thought (THG file photo)

Online Exhibits
Telecommunications in Colorado

Throughout history, human beings have had an innate desire to communicate. This exhibit features a timeline from face-to-face communications of the mid-19th century to today’s instant, global communications, and invites the viewer to imagine what it must have been like to wait weeks or months for news from back home.

Using Allen True’s Wings of Thought mural as a motif, the exhibit highlights documents, directories, and photographs from Telecommunications History Group archives. This online exhibit is based on a 2011 THG exhibit at the Denver Public Library.

The online version focuses on eight eras:

	1800–1843 From a time before telecommunications through to the invention of the telegraph. Communications progressed from line-of-sight or courier delivery to telegrams.
	1843–1863 From the invention of the telegraph to its appearance in Colorado.
	1876–1906 From the first telephones in Colorado through the invention of the vacuum tube.
	1906–1928 Including the spread of phones throughout Colorado—including "long distance" calls within the state itself!
	1929–1950 From the first phones allowing you to dial for yourself through the near-universal availability of phones throughout the state.
	1953–1981 From Colorado's first cable system to the beginnings of the computer, cell phone, and internet revolution.
	1984–2007 From the breakup of the Bell System monopoly through widespread wireless access to the internet, these years were a whirlwind of development.
	2011– As the original library exhibit was created in 2011, this was the "present," and anything after was the future. See what was predicted, and how it matches what we've seen in the last fifteen-plus years.