Phone collection

The telephone collection of the Buzău County Museum, the largest collection of its kind in the country with pieces in working condition, includes over 300 telephones of Romanian and foreign origin (Germany, France, Belgium, USSR) and chronologically illustrates the history and role of this inventions in our lives. The nucleus of this collection is the donation of the Buzoian colonel, Nicolae Antohi (1930 - 2013), who started collecting them since 1975. It includes civilian desk phones, wall phones, public phones, military phones and telephone exchanges from different periods: at the end of the 19th century until the present day, predominating the civil ones from the interwar period.

The oldest piece on display is an Ericsson telephone set from 1898. It is equipped with a local battery and is the precursor of the printed circuit. The model was manufactured over a period of almost 20 years, starting from 1898 and until almost 1920.

Another important piece of the collection is the handcrafted table telephone, which dates back to the 1950s. The model was manufactured in a small series, up to 50 pieces, and worked by political prisoners in Romanian penitentiaries. These telephones were introduced and operated within the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, starting from the 50s. The piece owned by the museum worked in the secretariat of the former communist leader, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, President of the State Council of the Romanian People's Republic between 1961 and 1965.

Among the pieces of the exhibition are several telephone exchanges, some of them equipped with 10 lines, such as Vestitorul and Viitorul, produced in Romania in the 1940s, or with a support capacity of up to 30 lines, such as the Standard campaign telephone exchange for transmissions.

The exhibition is completed by cabin phones with local and central battery, digital and wall model, as well as a series of mobile phones, which appeared on the Romanian market in mass in the first years after the revolution of December 1989.