By official statements competent persons, the complete digitalization of the Moscow city telephone network is coming to an end. Therefore, analog communications will soon sink into oblivion. But behind these silent tons of "iron" is a giant layer of history and the fate of people. The Museum is called upon to preserve all this for posterity. history of MGTS, accepting everyone on excursions at st. Zorge, d. 27.

The museum was opened in 1982 as a gift to Muscovites on the centenary of the Moscow city telephone network on the initiative of the management of MGTS OJSC. Here you can see many interesting and even rare exhibits. For example, a telephone from 1890, an interesting old manual for telegraph lines, and a still functioning model of the very first automatic telephone exchange. She began working in 1930 and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having worked the longest of all other automatic telephone exchanges that have ever existed.

At the very beginning of the exposition of the Museum of the History of MGTS there is a historical symbol - the banner of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and the People's Commissariat of Communications, awarded during the Second World War to the winners in the socialist competition. Part of the hall is filled with rare communications equipment, which has been accumulated since 1882. Then on the Kuznetsky bridge, in the house of the wealthy merchant Popov, the first telephone exchange in Moscow was opened. She was manual, that is, she could not boast of the automation process - the telephone operator accepted the call, she connected with the desired subscriber when she was called by name and address.

The connection schedule of that time shows how few people in the capital could afford such an expensive device as a telephone: now the same number of subscribers in the most ordinary metropolitan office. And then all the numbers were four-digit, and the employee was able to remember them all by heart. Many artifact phones do not have a dial, but right side there is a special handle, turning which you could hear the voice of the "young lady". Among the old exhibits, it is surprising to see familiar logos - for example, on one of the first telephones, released in 1895, there is a sign of the Ericsson company, which is still popular today.

The Museum of the History of MGTS has the first payphones, which appeared in the center of Moscow in 1909. By 1917, communication was so well established that one of the primary tasks of the revolution was, as you know, "to take over the telephone and telegraph."

In the museum you can see a real telephone control point. The period after 1942 is well represented - then it was possible to completely abandon the services of "young ladies", and in the 60s the wholesale telephone installation began.

The museum also has pages that cause an involuntary smile. For example, a special stand that tells about the fight against various scammers who sold counterfeit coins for phones, and vandals who unsuccessfully tried to tear off the phone in a payphone.

Today, MGTS has completely different equipment and not such problems. And the Museum of the History of MGTS clearly demonstrates with what a small step a great deed begins - telephone communication, without which we now cannot live a single day.

Now, when we are no longer easy Cell phones, and whole minicomputers in bags and pockets, even disk devices of the recent past, seem to be history. And what will you say when you enter the museum of the Moscow City Telephone Network (MGTS), which contains unique telephone sets and more? By the way, do you know which modern company laid the foundation for telephony in our country?

The MGTS Museum began its work in 1982. The first exhibits were collected in 3 years, people themselves brought the devices. The equipment and telephone exchanges of the telephone network division were transferred to this corporate museum.

Telephony, as a phenomenon, appeared in late XIX century. The transmission of human speech over a distance was solved by many engineers of that time. There was already a telegraph then, but the telegraph required an intermediary. Confidentiality and transmission speed were lost. Alexander Graham Bell was the first to turn speech into an electrical signal and vice versa. He was not a physicist and dealt with the problems of hearing-impaired people, engaged in their adaptation and invented special devices. The effect of telephoning, as often happens in life, happened to him by chance, when something broke in the device of his telegraph. The phone and microphone were in one bottle, it was impossible to speak and listen at the same time, only in turn. The battery connected to this device made it possible to transmit speech over 100 meters. The device was patented and presented at an exhibition in 1876. Two years later (in 1878) the first telephone exchange with 200 numbers appeared in the city of New Haven. Bell's tube could only connect two people. In order to connect more, a switching point is needed - namely a telephone exchange.

By 1890, 5 major US cities already had their own telephone networks - fast confidential data transmission for banks and exchanges. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were five companies in Sweden alone producing equipment for such a rapidly developing industry as telephony, including Ericsson.

In Russia, all the attempts and developments of engineers did not find support from the government. But industrialists and entrepreneurs applied in 1881 with a request to be allowed to equip a new connection in Russia. The regulation was developed in a few months. In St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Warsaw and Riga, the American company Bell began to create telephone networks.

The first call took place in Moscow in July 1882 from Popov's house (Kuznetsky house 6, now 12). There, on the 5th floor, premises were rented and switches installed. There was a rack on the roof. There were 50 numbers on each exchange, and they were processed by telephone operators, the exchanges were interconnected. Renting a point cost 250 rubles a year (the average cost of a house), 60 rubles a raccoon coat, a loaf of bread 2 kopecks. At first 26 subscribers (bankers, restaurateurs), but already in 1901 - 3,000 subscribers.

In 1901, a competition was held among possible network operators with a basic requirement of no more than 125 rubles a year. The competition was won by the Swedish-Danish-Russian society (Erikson equipment, Swedish and Danish banks, and a small participation of Russian entrepreneurs). There was very high competition in Europe, and the society aspired to the young Russian market. They offered prices of 79 rubles and the best quality.

In 1902, the foundation was laid for a new building at 5 Milyutinsky Lane (arched structures, glass roof). By 1916 Moscow urban network was the best in Europe in terms of equipment and the number of subscribers. Until now, in the center of Moscow, there are cables laid by the Swedes, but not all, of course, are used.

The stations were equipped with switches. Telephone operators sat and stood. Each slot at the bottom of the field is the subscriber's number, the first digits of the number were at the top, and the next ones were calculated at the bottom of the field.

The rate of connections is 180 per hour - 3 per minute. Telephone operators recognized their subscribers by their voices. Telephone operators had to be well educated, with good manners, a pleasant timbre of voice and knowledge foreign language with incredible patience. For telephone operators there were special requirements for growth of at least 158, for the length of the arms. These were mostly poor noblewomen, the work was around the clock.

Phone model of that time: handset and speech device are separated. Call for attention. The handle was scrolled, a current was created and sent to the telephone operator at the switch. Below was also a local battery.

During the revolution, the Moscow telephone station was captured for 5 days by the Red Army (the defense was held by a small detachment of junkers): "To capture the telephone and telegraph in the first place and by any effort."

After the revolution, the network was nationalized, many specialists left or were fired. And since mainly Swedish specialists worked in the network, the problems of maintaining the network were very serious, and the possibility of servicing subscribers was sharply reduced. Telephones were only in hospitals, banks, private subscribers were practically not served.

And the world at that time was already switching to automatic telephone exchanges - automated stations. The first automated station, by the way, appeared in 1895 in America, and it was created by an undertaker. And the reason was the usual competition. He had a business rival, also an undertaker, whose wife worked at a telephone exchange and always connected customers only with her husband. For exclusion human factor and the first ATS was created.

Many thanks to the museum staff for a detailed story about how telephony developed.

• Address: 152252, Zorge street, 27.
• How to get there:
  metro station "Sokol" (exit to Peschany St. and Alabyan St.), buses: 26, 100, trolleybuses: 19, 59, 61 (1st stop "Levitan St."), then on foot.
  metro station "Oktyabrskoe Pole" (last car from the center, exit from the metro to the left), bus 26, trolleybuses: 59, 61 (2nd stop "Ul. Levitan"), then on foot.
• It is important to know: you need to gather a group of 10 people and agree on the date of the tour, admission to the museum is free.
• Telephone: +7 499 198-05-63.

We invite students of grades 4-7 to an excursion to the Museum of the History of Telephone Communications of MGTS!
The museum of OJSC MGTS visually presents all stages of the development of telephone communications in Russia. It is considered one of the best corporate museums in its field, and its collections are comparable to the most famous expositions two Russian capitals.
The MGTS Museum was opened on July 8, 1982, on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Moscow City Telephone Network. The initiators of its creation were the head of MGTS Viktor Vasiliev and deputy. chief engineer Evgeny Dubrovsky.
Here you can see collections of payphones and telephones, the oldest of which is Bell-Black's apparatus of 1890. There are many real historical and technical values ​​among the exhibits: this is Bell's handset of 1878, and the book "Guide to the Construction of Overhead Telegraph Lines" of 1878, and even a working model of the first automatic telephone exchange. It was put into operation in 1930 and entered the Guinness Book of Records as the longest operating automatic telephone exchange in the world.
Date: February 26, 2018
Time of the tour: from 15:00 to 16:00.
Address: Moscow, st. Zorge, d. 27 (4-storey yellow brick ATS building, opposite residential building No. 34)
Directions:
From m. "Sokol"(exit to the streets Peschany, Alabyan) behind the church stop trl. 19,59,61, bus 100,26,691. Get off at the bus stop "st. Levitan", go to the other side of the street and then walk to the street. Sorge towards railway. On st. Sorge go left along residential building number 36. Travel time from metro 15-20 min.;
From metro station "October field"(the last car from the center, when exiting to the left and again to the left) at the crossroads, turn right to the stop trl. 19.59.61, author 100.26. Exit to
2nd stop "st. Levitan", then walk to the street. Sorge in the direction of the railway. On st. Sorge go left along residential building number 36. Travel time from metro 15-20 min.

) has been in operation for 18 years. He is exactly 100 years younger than the company itself. It would seem that it is impossible to turn back the clock and collect exhibits that fully reflect the century of development and activity of MGTS. However, the museum staff largely succeeded.

General view of the museum exposition

The idea of ​​creating a museum arose in the late 70s from Viktor Faddeevich Vasiliev, who at that time was the director of the Moscow City Telephone Network. He entrusted the development of the concept, the collection of materials and exhibits to an experienced signalman Evgeny Petrovich Dubrovsky. The former deputy chief engineer of MGTS for the operation of linear facilities willingly retrained as a director of the museum. Yevgeny Petrovich managed to rally like-minded people around him and in three years he gathered with them an excellent collection of material evidence of the past and present of telephone communications in Moscow. On the opening day, the MGTS Museum presented more than 2,000 exhibits.

The repository of information about the development of the Moscow telephone network now has its own history. The museum was opened on July 8, 1982 in the old building of the Central Telephone Exchange on Markhlevsky Street, two years later it moved to the street. Zorge, 27. In 1993, Yevgeny Petrovich passed away and Lidia Nikolaevna Makridina took over the museum, Valentina Ivanovna Goldaevskaya was appointed curator. Thanks to the efforts of these two women, the museum not only replenished with exhibits - today there are more than 3,000 of them, but also acquired a new modern look.

Bell-Black telephone set

The exposition begins with the oldest Bell-Black telephone set. Its design consists of Bell's own telephone (see "Bell Labs: 75 Years of Innovation"), which is mounted in a handset, a bell, an inductor, and Leclanche elements to power Black's microphone. Today, this rarity impresses with its antiquity, size and weight - 8.5 kg. And at the end of the 19th century, it was considered a miracle of technology. This, however, did not last long: the device was imperfect and inconvenient in operation. The microphone was on the panel, which forced the speaker to bend down. And in order to avoid problems with the lever system, the instructions suggested, "removing the phone from the lever, press the latter with your hand from the bottom up to make sure that it is fully raised and has the correct position." Such phones were used by the first Moscow subscribers until the end of the century.

Next to this unique museum exhibit are two photographs - the American Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), the creator of the first telephone, and the patent he received in 1876 from the American Patent Office for the invention of "telegraph, with which it is possible to transmit human speech" . Bell's name is firmly established not only in world history but also in the domestic In the autumn of 1881, his company began building telephone networks in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riga, and Odessa.

The first manual telephone exchange of the Moscow city telephone network for 800 numbers was opened in 1882 in house 6 on the Kuznetsky bridge. The list of its telephone subscribers included 26 people. They were mostly wealthy merchants, industrialists who could afford such a luxury.

Gradually, the number of subscribers increased, and with it the number of complaints against the company increased. During peak hours, normal operation of the station became impossible due to design flaws in the Ghileland system switches used by Bella. Subscribers sometimes had to wait for several hours, and errors in connections were not uncommon. The girls-telephone operators, in order to connect their subscriber with the switchboard, behind which another operator worked, had to talk loudly, shouting over each other. In museum photographs of that time, everything looks quiet and safe, but written evidence tells a different story. Telephone operators had to work with great effort.

By 1901 there were 2860 subscribers in Moscow. Most of the phones were installed in the center of the city, but a lot of them were installed outside the Boulevard Ring, especially to the north of it.

A special place in the museum is occupied by materials about Russian inventors of telephone technology. And among them - Pavel Mikhailovich Golubitsky (1845-1911). Our compatriot not only repeated Bell's telephone, investigated its shortcomings, but also in 1880 created a multi-pole telephone, recognized throughout the world as the best. It significantly increased the range of telephoning. Pavel Mikhailovich owns many inventions. The most significant is the central battery (CB) system for powering subscriber sets. Previously, each subscriber had his own, so-called local battery, from which the microphone of his device was powered. Golubitsky's system made it possible to concentrate power supplies at the telephone exchange. This invention is still in use today.

Phone numbers of the Swedish-Danish-Russian joint-stock company

As the stages of history change, so does one museum exposition replace another. 18 years have passed since the opening of the first telephone exchange, in Russia the era of the Bell company was ending. Contemporaries reproached the Americans for their unwillingness to invest in reconstruction, despite the fact that the subscription fee was huge for those times - 250 rubles a year. Therefore, when the concession period of the American company ended and the Moscow City Telephone Network was put up for auction, one of the main conditions for the tender was to reduce the monthly fee. As a result, the Swedish-Danish-Russian joint-stock company won, which indicated in the application the tariff - 79 rubles per year. Another condition was the radical reconstruction of both the station and linear structures of the MGTS, which by the beginning of the 20th century were almost entirely airborne.

The second period in the history of the Moscow city telephone network - Swedish-Danish-Russian - began on November 1, 1901. By 1903, the network capacity increased to 4650 numbers due to a temporary auxiliary station. And in Milyutinsky Lane, the construction of a multi-storey building of the Central Telephone Exchange (CTS) with a capacity of 60,000 numbers was in full swing. It was the most difficult technical task. When creating the design of the station, the specialists of the Swedish company L. M. Erickson used the experience of building a similar station in Stockholm. She was considered the best in terms of equipment. But Moscow surpassed her. In 1904, the installation of the first stage (hall "A") for 12,000 rooms was completed.

Simultaneously with the reconstruction of the station facilities, the Swedish-Danish-Russian joint-stock company also improved the linear facilities: underground cable lines were built. On the main routes, multi-hole concrete pipes were laid. This is clearly evidenced not only by photographs of those years, but also ... by our contemporaries, cable operators. In some places the buildings are not only preserved, but are in working condition.

In the center of the hall of the museum of the history and development of MGTS stands a multiple (connecting) switch - an object that vaguely resembles a piano. At the time of the opening of hall "A" at the Central Station, such " musical instruments 112 stood along the walls. And behind each of them sat a young lady with a headset - a set of an earpiece and a microphone.

The girls were not allowed not only to leave the hall without the permission of the administration, but also to get married.

The requirements imposed on telephone operators by the administration of the Swedish-Danish-Russian Society were extremely strict. The girls were not allowed not only to leave the hall without the permission of the administration, but also to get married. With a huge daily load, the day off was supposed to be only once a month. One of the exhibits of the museum is a collection of "Customer Service Rules". It strictly stipulates not only the technical actions of telephone operators, but also the rules for communicating with subscribers. For example, girls were forbidden to answer subscribers: "I did not disconnect you," because "it does not concern the subscriber who exactly disconnected him." If the subscriber had to wait a little, in response to his irritation, the telephone operator was obliged to say: "Excuse me, what number do you want," and not to explain: "I answered the first signal." Probably, in no case did they want to make it clear to the subscriber that there are many like him, and there is only one telephone operator. And one more obligatory rule: "The telephone operator must speak with such an expressive voice intonation that the subscriber involuntarily listens to what she repeats."

Small capacity manual switch

In 1910, each telephone operator had an average of 160-170 connections per hour, not counting "busy" answers. And the total number of conversations for 1910 amounted to 194,764,127. The number of subscribers this year reached 27,370, and by the beginning of 1917 it exceeded 60,000.

The revolutionary events affected the Central Telephone Exchange in the most sad way. Experienced civil engineers were convinced that as a result of fierce fighting to capture the station, it had fallen into a state that could not be restored. However, nine years later, nothing on the CFTS reminded of numerous damages. And by 1930, 14 substations were put into operation in Moscow, each with a capacity of 100 to 1000 numbers.

A fragment of a machine-type automatic telephone exchange occupies a special place in the MGTS museum. She is not just an "old lady", but world celebrity- the first of its kind in Moscow was built in 1930 and the last one in the world was dismantled. In 1998, during the period of dismantling, this station under the index 231 was listed in the London Guinness Book of Records for the longest work experience - almost 68 years. Amazingly, it still works, now in the museum.

Fragment of the first machine telephone exchange, installed in 1930.

"Long-liver" is one of the three stations presented here. In the exposition, next to it, an automatic telephone exchange of a decade-step system (ATSS) is installed. The first such station for 2,000 numbers was put into operation in 1949. And in 1968, the first coordinate exchange (ATSC) with a capacity of 10,000 numbers began to work. In the museum of the history of MGTS, against the background of its two predecessors, it looks like a "white swan". Light, clean, silent. The introduction of a coordinate system at MGTS stations changed the established proportions between capacity growth and the number of service personnel. Due to their greater reliability, they require less maintenance work. By 1982, there were already 153 coordinate stations operating on the Moscow City Telephone Network.

ATS coordinate system. Such stations now form the basis of MGTS station facilities.

And then came the time of electronic PBXs. Their development began in 1987. In terms of the quality of communication, the speed of service, they are much superior to their predecessors, do not require a large number of personnel, and allow them to provide many new services: from an alarm clock, call forwarding to conference calls. Gradually, the old, decade-step and coordinate stations are being replaced by electronic (or digital) stations.

MGTS is being modernized and developed. Currently, it has 573 exchanges with a total of 4,039,927 lines. The network serves more than 4 million subscribers and is one of the largest local telephone networks in the world.