You're probably familiar with the term planned obsolescence. The electronics that surround us have an expiration date. Eventually—and probably sooner than you think—they'll stop working and join the global pile of ewaste.
​
The amount of ewaste in the world is incalculable, but one thing is for certain: it contributes to climate change and is hazardous to humans. Abandoned electronics crowd landfills and their toxic metals and plastics can leech into soil and water or pollute the air when burned. Getting rid of them, whether it's because they no longer spark joy or quite literally have started to spark, is a task that needs to be handled properly.

Recycling is often presented as the solution, and while it's not the complete answer to what to do with ewaste, it is often the best option at our disposal. Toward that end, we've assembled this guide to places that will take your old or dead electronics, and either turn them into something useful for someone else or make sure they're safely recycled.


Best Buy
Nationwide electronics retailer Best Buy has, arguably, the best recycling program going. Its website details exactly what the store will take, and a drop-down menu in each category gets specific for your state. You can bring in up to three items per day. Most of them can be recycled for free. Some items might make you eligible for a discount or get you a trade-in deal on something else. There is also a $29.99 haul-away service for large appliances or TVs if you're purchasing a replacement at Best Buy. It's $99.99 if you're not buying anything.

Staples
When you're picking up printer paper at Staples, you can drop off lots of electronic items for recycling. The office supplies seller has a free electronics recycling program that covers a large list of categories. You can bring in up to seven items per store per day. Businesses can use Staples' recycling program for their old tech, ink and toner cartridges, and even those K-cups that their coffee machines spit out.

Apple Trade In
Your old Apple devices can go back from whence they came. If your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Mac is in working order, you may receive an Apple gift card for it. And if it's broken, you can still recycle it for free. The Apple Trade In program isn't just for Apple devices. You can get a prepaid shipping label sent to you so you can mail in Android devices, printers, and more.

Amazon Recycling Program
Alexa devices, Kindles, and any other Amazon-branded electronics you have can be recycled for free through a third-party recycling program that partnered with Amazon. You fill out a form about your device, and you'll receive a UPS shipping label.

Call2Recycle
Call2Recycle focuses on batteries and cell phones and directs people to local recycling drop-off partners, including places like Home Depot and Lowe's.

Earth911
Earth911 is a nationwide clearinghouse for recycling programs of all kinds. The electronics category is an A-to-Z (well, A-to-V for vinyl records) guide of drop-off and mail-in programs that you can search by ZIP code.
 
 Written by Chandra Steele for pcmag.com
 
[Source: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-recycle-your-technology] Last updated: April, 2021

By John Herlihy

Please, someone, give me back the old phone booth,
Sitting on the street corner like an old wisdom tooth.
From our vantage point clutching our smart phones,
The old closet could now serve as coffin for old bones.
They no longer stand where once they always used to be,
In a drug store or diner, connecting the world for a fee.

Like Pa’s old wood-paneled station wagon in the yard,
Or Ma’s old rot-iron frying pan sizzling strips of white lard,
Like our first TV, us children watching thru magnifying glass.
Listening to the rosary on the stand-up radio after Sunday Mass,
I used to iron Pa’s pajamas using a heavy iron heated on coals.
And threw newspapers onto porches between telephone poles.

This was a life that in my childhood I could happily call mine.
At the corner store, I bought bags of penny candy for only a dime.
When I grew up, I began to live the expat life of a vagabond;
I flitted through all the capitals of Europe as if by magic wand.
But whenever I returned to the US and home for the summer,
I called from the airport phone booth to speak first with my mother.

Perhaps there still exists somewhere an old phone booth of reflected glass,
On display in a modern museum presenting artifacts from the past.
I suspect paper routes no longer exist, though watching TV is still a habit,
Saying the rosary after Mass now probably the sole prevue of an abbot.
No one talks on the phone anymore; they take selfies on smart phones
They fly thru the air taking Gopro shots from their magical drones.

[source: https://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewPoetry.asp?id=338499]

​Here in the States, telephone booths are rare. You might be lucky enough to find a partially dismantled booth on the side of a highway, but it’s, most likely, missing the most important part – the phone.
 
Telephone booths have been around for over one hundred years. Inventor William Gray designed the telephone booth after realizing that making a call outside the home was difficult, if not impossible. To remedy this hassle, booths were eventually installed in a menagerie of public places such as railroad stations, banks, and hotels. 

Because the foot traffic in these bustling areas generated a consistent revenue, phonebooths made enough money to pay the attendance salary. 

Oh, did we not mention that interesting little factoid yet?
 
Well, telephone booths were operated by an attendant!
 
Unlike the coin operated payphones, we grew accustomed to, the first phone booths were managed and watched over. The attendant would lock a customer into the wooden booth (which in the early days had a carpeted floor) until that individual’s phone call was completed. That would ensure that the customer didn’t make a hasty retreat without making a payment.[1]

​We are fortunate to have several telephone booths in the gallery, including this month’s object-of-interest.
 
This is an early 1900’s telephone booth with an S. H. Couch Company magneto wall type phone.
 
It was a non-coin operated telephone and the booth itself was made of white oak and was double walled which meant it offered whoever was inside a good deal of privacy. That was important to Judge J. John Fox, a judge with the Boston Municipal Court.
 
Judge Fox was said to have frequently used this telephone booth to conduct his work. So much, in fact, that when the Judge retired, this phone booth was given to him as a parting gift.

​

2. We all enjoy a good story and isn’t that what history really is? Museums offer an incredible way to learn about so many things. This vital resource is beneficial to all age groups, young and old.

3. Museums offer a variety of programming which often help to support other local businesses. Our popular special exhibit, “The ART of Conversation” helped to introduce local artists to a wider audience. The museum offered not only a networking opportunity but a chance to sell some of their paintings and sculptures.

4. Museums have gift shops which means they offer another opportunity for employment and a place to support your local economy. While our gift shop is small, we sell different items from craftspeople here in Warner, NH.

5. Museums are hugely important to the overall health of a State’s tourism efforts. It may surprise you to learn that we host visitors from all over the United States, as well as places like Germany, Japan, Norway, and India. 

                                                                                                *********​

​The object we'd like to share with you this month is a train order hoop!
 
A precursor to the “Y” Stick, the train order hoop was a tool used to deliver telegraphs to trains passing by.

As a telegrapher saw a train approach his station, he would alert the dispatcher who then decided if there was a train order to be issued. If so, the telegrapher would copy the order, roll it up and clip it to the hoop, and then run to the edge of the train platform so that men on the train could receive the orders. Telegraphers delivered these hoop-bound orders to different people at different sections of the train -- at the front, the engineer, and toward the rear, the conductor.
 
Unfortunately, as you can probably tell by looking at the above photo of the train order hoop, it was an unwieldy tool. The person receiving an order on the train would have to swiftly catch hold of the hoop by getting an arm through it, hope the telegrapher let go of it quickly enough, and bring the whole tool aboard to unclip the train order and toss the hoop back out onto the tracks. There was a massive potential for injuries both to trainmen and telegraphers alike depending on how well the maneuver was performed.

​Eventually, the train order hoop was replaced by the Y Stick, upon which a telegrapher could thread string around and to which they could attach an order that the trainman would then grab, rather than the entire hoop. 

If you've ever visited our museum or taken our guided tour, then you know we love talking about operators! Switchboard operators were essential to the success of the telephone industry, but as modern technology progressed, operators became obsolete. 

One man who played a major role in this obsolescence was Almon B. Strowger, the inventor of the the automatic dialing device.

​Pictured below is the Stowger 11-Digit Dial Wall Telephone from about 1905. The dial has eleven digits, numbered 0 through 9 as well as an additional dial position for “long distance,” which would connect the person dialing to an operator when they wanted to place calls outside of the local exchange.

Strowger was born on February 11, 1830, in Penfield, New York.

Growing up, he was notorious for inventing things, especially if it got him and his siblings out of doing their daily chores.

After spending time in both the military and as a teacher, Strowger bought an undertaking business in Kansas in June of 1882, and it was with this career change that he was able to focus more on his inventions.

Though we don’t know for certain what prompted Stowger to design the automatic dialer, we do know of a story his relative Ronald Stowger told that shows a connection between experiences in his life and the desire for technology that bypassed operators.

​According to Ronald, Almon was losing business due to the interference of a telephone operator who was romantically involved with a rival undertaker. Stowger believed this woman to be diverting calls for his business to this competitor, and he was fueled by this to invent a device that would allow folks to directly call other people, without the need for an operator to connect them. Thus, he began to experiment and create, and the first automatic telephone exchange was installed successfully in La Porte, Indiana on November 3, 1892. ​

Field telephones are telephones used for military communications. They can draw power from their own battery, from a telephone exchange via a central battery known as CB, or from an external power source. Some field phones need no battery, being sound-powered telephones.

​Field telephones replaced flag signals and the telegraph as an efficient means of communication. The first field telephones had a wind-up generator used to power the telephone's ringer & batteries to send the call, and call the manually operated telephone central. This technology was used from the 1910s to the 1960s. Later the ring signal was made either electronically by operating a push button, or automatically as on domestic telephones.
 
Shortly after the invention of the telephone, attempts were made to adapt the technology for military use. Telephones were already being used to support military campaigns in British India and in British colonies in Africa in the late 1870s and early 1880s. In the United States, telephone lines connected fortresses with each other and with army headquarters. They were also used for fire control at fixed coastal defense installations. The first telephone for use in the field was developed in the United States in 1889 but it was too expensive for mass production. Subsequent developments in several countries made the field telephone more practicable. Field telephones operate over wire lines, sometimes commandeering civilian circuits when available, but often using wires strung in combat conditions. The wire material was changed from iron to copper. Devices for laying wire in the field were developed and systems with both battery-operated sets for command posts and hand generator sets for use in the field were developed.
 
By the First World War the use of field telephones had become widespread.

During our guided tours [pre-COVID days], we would very often surprise guests when we told them that credit of the telephone should be given to more than just one person, namely Bell. The decision to not give Alexander Graham Bell sole credit is more historically correct. Well, that's our opinion.

Lewis Howard Latimer, who was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1848, was an African-American inventor, electrical pioneer, and a son of fugitive slaves. Latimer taught himself mechanical drawing while in the Union Navy, and eventually became a chief draftsman, patent expert, and inventor.

Latimer worked with three of the greatest scientific inventors in American history, Hiram S. Maxim, Thomas A. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. It was Latimer's work with Bell, in 1876, that would eventually earn Bell his patent for his invention called the harmonic telegraph.

Latimer designed a number of his own inventions, including an improved railroad car bathroom and an early air conditioning unit.

Some of Latimer's work can be seen at the Lewis Latimer Museum located in Queens, New York. 

​Around the world, the telegraph pole has been all but replaced by the telephone pole. Although its primary purpose was not that of a billboard, the telephone pole has and continues to be used to communicate with residents of a neighborhood, provide information, incite action, sell a used sofa or help locate a missing dog.

Posting signs to any telephone pole [or any utility pole] is illegal, yet the practice of nailing or stapling a yard sale sign  [another very common announcement]  to a telephone pole continues.

The first pole was erected in the mid 1800s. The United States Congress granted Samuel Morse $30,000 to build a 40-mile telegraph line between Baltimore, Maryland and Washington D.C. Morse, whose first attempt at laying underground cable between the two destinations failed, later moved the cables above ground, giving rise to the need for utility poles. Once the telegraph was replaced by phones, poles became more commonly referred to as telephone poles.

For something so commonplace as a telephone pole, little is actually known about them, much like the telephone. Below are just a few interesting fun-facts to wow your friends.

Back In the day, many tools and test equipment were developed to be able to maintain telephone service throughout the exchange.  One such piece of test equipment was  called The Woodpecker.

This test unit was used to locate “faults” in telephone cables, such as the most common “case of troubles”; short circuits.

Officially called a Cableman’s Test Set, The Woodpecker  comprised electrical relays and other components, mounted inside a hinged wooden box that also had space for dry cell batteries to power the unit. 

Another piece that was used with The Woodpecker was a headset and pickup coil. The pickup coil was also constructed and installed in a smaller wooden box. Both boxes had leather straps so that a lineman or cableman could sling them over their shoulder, making it easy to transport.

The technician would simply clip the test leads onto the telephone circuit (a cable pair) and switch The Woodpecker to “on”.  The Woodpecker would be connected to a cable pair, usually at the Central Office and would generate a tone or series of tones onto the circuit. The technician would take the headset and pickup coil outside along the telephone cables and listen for the tone(s).  When the tone could not be heard, the technician would retrace steps back toward the Central Office until the tone was heard again. It was determined that at the exact point where the tone stopped was the fault location.

So, the tone produced by the Cableman’s Test Set, sounded a lot like a woodpecker tapping its beak on a tree, pole or log and that is how it got its name.