Innovating, automating, improving and sometimes scraping it all to make way for better mechanisms – for better or for worse – the evolution of communicating devices is as alluring as the artefacts themselves. Visitors to the Gallery ‘Vintage Voyage: Communication Technology’ explore the fascinating stories of technological innovation and resourcefulness in overcoming vast distances in an often-hostile natural environment.
Focusing on two-way communication– the Gallery hosts an array of working artefacts and technologies, developed and designed in response to one of the fundamental drivers of our humanity – the innate need to connect. Technologies that the Gallery explores include communication methods past and present, post, telegraphy, telephony, radio and the innovations and technologies of various Indian path-breakers. Murals, mannequins, multimedia and modern art installations complement the teleprinters, ionosphere recorder, gramophone, manual telephone exchange, wall-mounted telephones, replica of Bell’s liquid transmitter and fire-alarm box which occupy prime positions. Celebrating true-tales about the men as well as their machines, BITM invites visitors to embark on this vintage voyage of rare collectives – each a functional piece that charted the evolution of our communication technology, as we know it today.
