Museum of Telecommunications

Avenida de los Italianos 851 (Costanera Sur)
Tel. 4968-3116 / 4968-3115 / 4968-3114
Open Saturdays and Sundays from 2 p. m. to 6 p. m.
Holidays from December 20 to January 31

The building that harbors this Museum was formerly the famous Munich beer bar located on the Costanera Sur (southern riverside avenue), a Bavarian style construction fruit of the inspiration of the Hungarian architect Andrés Kalnay, inaugurated in 1927.
The exhibition rooms have been designed following a thematic and chronological criterion. One of the main objectives pursued by this museum consists in promoting the active participation of its visitors, thus turning it into a living museum. There is a lecture hall in the basement where seminars, conferences and debates can be held. Exhibits include a collection of chip telephone cards issued by Telecom, and a collection of public telephones up to present models. There is also a library that houses a collection of frequently consulted telephone directories from 1901 up to the present. The main floor located on the ground floor has a first room devoted to the history of telegraphy ranging from smoke signals to modern fax machines, including Chappe´s optical telegraph, Morse´s electric telegraph, Teletypes, old facsimiles and modern fax machines.
The second room is devoted to the invention of telephones and the first point to point apparatuses. The next room contains a description of the evolution of switchboards ranging from manual equipments, electromechanical ones and current digital and electronic systems.
There is a fourth room devoted to radio communications and television, with exhibits such as an old galena operated radio receiver, and the first television camera used in the country.