My town's old courthouse had a 1920s phone exchange hidden in the basement

I volunteer at the county historical society near Albany, NY and last month we got access to the old courthouse basement for storage planning. There's this huge wooden switchboard still mounted on the wall, all dusty and tangled with wires. I figured it was just some old electrical panel until the caretaker said it was a manual phone exchange that served the whole town until 1957. That got me thinking about how fast communication changed, you know? People who used that thing lived in a world where you'd literally ask an operator to connect you. Now I look at my phone and think about how the wires we use today are basically invisible, same purpose but totally different footprint. Has anyone else stumbled onto old tech like this that just makes you stop and think about the timeline of everyday objects? I keep picturing the operator sitting there in a wool skirt and earphones, plugging lines all day.

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