On 1/23/2026 7:24 PM, steve shumaker
wrote:
Any idea what happened to the artifacts put into
storage?
Steve
Steve,
That is another interesting story in itself.
"AT&T realized that the collection, with some 700 pieces, had
important historical value and should not be simply discarded."
Ran Slayton and others at the Teletype Cop. had established a
database of about 500 of the Museum's significant items and used
it to produce a catalog of the Museum's collection. It consisted
of a short description and a Polaroid photograph. Some items
include dates, customers and quantity produced. The catalog
consisted of 12 books of 11x17" pages and were distributed to
major museums around the country, to see if they were interested
in any of the items.
The AWA Museum received some items, including a Kleinschmidt
Electric tape printer from 1920, the prototype of the Model 17,
which was compatible with the German Hellscriber and a rotor-type
TTY encryption unit from about 1950.
The Antique Wireless Museum still has its copies. The pages have
been scanned, but the pages are all xerographic copies and the
photographs did not all copy well and cannot be improved on. I
was initially planning on having them put up on a web site, but
the picture quality on many of the pictures was so poor that I
gave up on the project.
If there is interest, maybe Nick will put them up.
A newspaper article on the closing of the Teletype corp. Museum is
enclosed. Note: the photo in the article is labeled as "Model 12
KSR", but is actually the GPE, "Iron Horse" perforator.
Have fun.
Duncan
K2OEQ