A garden party at the Bell Homestead in Brantford on Saturday attracted about 400 people to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the invention of the telephone.
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The afternoon featured live music by the Telephone City Music Society, and AILM+ Celtic Musicians. Dancers performed Nature Had the Answer: An Ode to the Telephone, an interpretive dance choreographed by Elsie Myers Martin, great-granddaughter of Alexander Graham Bell.
Visitors could see Life on the Line: The Evolution of the Bell Telephone, a new exhibit officially opened Saturday at the Henderson House.
Bell Homestead curator Brian Wood described the exhibit as a brightly lit, modern new space.
“With Bell Canada’s help we were able to get different models of telephones that we didn’t have before,” Wood explained.
“In developing the exhibit my goal wasn’t to talk about how the phone works, but more about the evolution of the phone and how it has sentimental attachment to people. Everyone knows the phone they grew up with, or whatever phone was at grandma’s house.
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“For the younger audience, it even gives them the opportunity to dial a phone.”
In contrast to the instant connections people can make nowadays thanks to Bell’s invention, the curator said the telephone wasn’t always ideal for the inventor himself.
“Bell grew up in a time where if you wanted to talk to someone, you went to that person. You talked to them face to face,” Wood explained. “As a teacher of the deaf who taught speech and lip reading that was super-important to him.
“He was the type of person that, if he was deep in thought if he was working, and you spoke to him, you derailed his train of thought, and he couldn’t get it back again. So, he would never have a telephone anywhere (that) he worked because of the call bells.”
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