From Early Stories to Today · Drawing 36
Hello, who's there?
The 20th century
With this telephone, you turn the dial to call a number. You speak into the handset to talk to another person.
Look together
Which part do you hold near your ear?
An idea to try
Make a pretend telephone from an empty box. Your child acts out dialling an invented number, then takes turns exchanging a short message with you.
For the adult reading along
A little more to discover
Pointe-à-Callière's Hello, Montréal! exhibition explores the telephone's development using Bell's historical collections. Telephone shapes and the movements needed to make a call have changed. The drawing shows a rotary dial: you turn it to dial the digits, then use the handset to speak and listen.
Observe the dial, handset and cord separately. Compare these details with a device your child knows, without making a real call. The scene does not date the telephone's invention from this one model. Instead, it asks us to notice how a communication tool shapes the actions of its user.
Sources and context
These links lead to other websites. Explore them with an adult. Source titles appear in their original language; some linked pages are in French.
Source review: 2026-09-12. Illustrations simplify places and scenes; they are not historical documents.