Almost every state and city that has a notable Deaf population has what we like to call Deaf stores. These stores sell all the latest high-tech gadgets that allow Deaf people to have vibrating or flashing alarms, the newest pager or TTYs. Madison, Wisconsin is no exception with Jack Barr’s Barr Productions, where ASL instructional videos are also produced and sold. If every single state and city has one of these stores, why did we bother stopping by this one? Today is the grand opening of the third TTY museum in the United States, a dream of Barr for the last six years.

It all started, explained Barr, “when my daughter asked me what I was going to do with my old TTY. I told her that I was going to throw it away when it stopped working and she protested. She wanted to keep it to show it to her own kids, and sure enough I held on to it for her through many years. Later, I made the mistake of throwing away the shell of the large TTY and when my daughter was heartbroken, I felt so bad I decided to search for a replacement for her. After a while, word got out that I was searching for old TTYs so I got countless e-mails and phone calls and donations from people and before I knew it, my garage was full.”

With the help of business partner Kathy Clark, Jack decided to open a museum next to his store and underwent the task of collecting a variety of things to complete his collection. The museum includes the first ever TTY in the United States which was built in 1962, and is actually the prototype that Robert Weitbrecht used to make his first TTY call. The museum holds more than 85 of the telecommunications devices, as well as countless other old fire alarms, compact TTYs, alarm clocks and hearing aids. The large one room museum located in a strip mall is a shrine to the technological developments in the last 42 years for the average Deaf Joe. While much of the museum is undeveloped and the process of labeling and categorizing every piece in the museum is still being undertaken, I had a good time seeing many of the antique devices and understanding of what my parents and grandparents had to live with throughout their lives.

The last stop on our personalized tour with Jack Barr was not in the museum, but rather next door in his store. Jack pointed to one of the newest phones on the market, and one that I have never seen before; a Video Phone. It seems like a normal phone with one major difference: there is an 8 inch screen attached to the telephone that can flip up and down. This design allows Deaf callers to more practically make phone calls to other video conferencing users. Maureen Simatupang, who was at the museum grand opening, is from Indonesia and is responsible for marketing the phone. The phone has been in production for the last several years and already has made a very successful debut in Asia. This phone will soon be unveiled in America, and will be initially available only in Wisconsin. The phone, we learned, enables callers to use the same videoconferencing capabilities they previously but everything is neatly packed up in one piece of equipment to use. The phone will be made available for the first time at the DeafNation Expo in Milwaukee on September 25th.

The transition from technology made available to the Deaf community in 1962 and technology not yet made available in 2004 was a smooth one, and it allowed me to really see just how far we’ve gone in these last 40 years. A crowd of what seemed like more than 100 people gathered for the grand opening and three news stations felt the opening was important enough to share with the entire city of Madison on the night’s news.

The story doesn’t end here, however. Jack still has a garage full of even more TTYs, and ultimately hopes to move the museum to its own freestanding building and have a comprehensive collection of the device that revolutionized the Deaf world. He asks that anyone with any old models of TTYs to contact him as he is still soliciting donations to add to his museum. You can reach him at:

Address: Barr Productions and Museum
4514 Monona Drive
Madison, WI 53716

E-mail: BP@TDS.net
Phone: 608-221-9993 (TTY)
608-442-7498 (Voice)