The telephone is one of the first technical objects with whom human beings become acquainted today: kids immediately show a desire to take it into their hands, they listen to it and talk with it sometimes before turning 2 years old, even though it is a very complex object. It embeds in a very little space systems translating electrical signals into voice and viceversa, an alphanumerical keypad, a ringer and most important the capability to connect from any place to any place in the world.

What was the path that led to the shape it has today? What other objects looking strange to our eye have been called “telephone”?

The collection of the Historical Archive of Telecom Italia contributed to some of the telephone on display at the Future Centre and let us reconstruct many of the steps that have led to today’s telephones.