The SIRTI collection of telephones in the Pavia Museum of Electrical Technology

Between 1978 and 1986 SIRTI, a leading Italian telecommunication engineering company established in 1921, assembled a collection of telephone equipment and instrumentation. The collection is now exhibited in the Museum of Electrical Technology in Pavia. This paper describes the magnificent SIRTI collection of telephones composed of about three hundred items, which illustrates the history of telephone technology from the last decades of the 19
^th
century to the present day.