What's the first thing you notice about this house? Electricity of course! This is the home of the Telephone Switchboard operator and her maintenance man husband. The year here is 1910 and we're starting to see more signs of the 20th century. In order to run a switchboard that would connect the citizens of the town with each other and the outside world; electricity was absolutely vital. The telephones in the homes and businesses could run on batteries but the switchboard required electricity. This meant that they needed to build their own power plant in town or find a way to hook up to the power coming from the big city of Cedar Rapids.

Notice the way the lights turn on in the rooms and the wires running from the switches to the ceiling lamps. This is the early way that homes had electricity. In the kitchen you will find a much lighter and brighter kitchen than you saw in some of the other homes. This too was the beginning of change in the way that people thought of their living spaces. Notice the sink on the other side of the stove. This was the height of luxury-running water inside the house. No longer did the children and mother need to go to the well to draw up the necessary water for cooking and bathing. It was at their fingertips-of course in those days there was only cold water available so it would still need to be heated on the stove.

The life of a telephone operator was confining and tiring, thus leading to the trend of family operations in rural areas. Relief operators were usually only hired when the manager's wife was unavailable. Night shift operators were allowed to sleep on a cot near the switchboard. Notice the uncomfortable looking bed in the music room-this is where the night operator would have slept. Telephones in small towns and rural areas were very new in 1910. Early telephone service utilized a "Party Line". All subscribers to one company were on the same line. Which means that when one person got a phone call, EVERYBODY'S phone would ring. Instead of phone numbers, subscribers were assigned "rings" in Morse code. People knew who the phone call was for by the number and lengths of the rings. Your ring might be two shorts and a long. Of course, it was also very easy to eavesdrop on your neighbor's conversations…but I'm sure that never happened!