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How did information travel through Luxembourg before people could check their phones? A University of Luxembourg history project approaches that question through postal archives, communications equipment and the memories of the people who operated the networks. The Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History, C²DH, describes the project in its 2020 annual report. It grew out of POST Luxembourg’s 175th anniversary in 2017 and led to a virtual exhibition launched in June 2020. The exhibition offers four connected ways to explore the institution’s history: a timeline, an interactive map, a digital collection and oral history interviews. Its historical sections draw on digitised material from POST Luxembourg’s archives, accompanied by explanations. For readers interested in everyday communication, the subjects include postal professions and the daily life of a postal worker. Other sections examine radio communication between 1964 and 1994, telephone exchanges, the introduction of GSM and the digitisation of telecommunications networks. Current and retired employees supplied interviews about events they witnessed or helped oversee. Their accounts give the exhibition a perspective that technical records alone cannot provide: how changes in communication were experienced by the people responsible for making services work. Objects supply another part of the story. The report describes around 20 items presented through high-resolution, rotating views. One example is a pulse repeater, identified as a crucial component of EMD telephone exchanges from the 1950s onwards. Each object was photographed from 24 angles for detailed examination. This material documents postal and telecommunications history, but the report does not reconstruct a particular remote community’s news delivery routes, newspaper readership or informal networks. It cannot establish which channel mattered most in an individual village. Its contribution is more specific: it preserves evidence about the systems and workers behind communication before the internet, providing a documented starting point for understanding how Luxembourg stayed connected.
How did information travel through Luxembourg before people could check their phones? A University of Luxembourg history project approaches that question through postal archives, communications equipment and the memories of the people who operated the networks.
The Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History, C²DH, describes the project in its 2020 annual report. It grew out of POST Luxembourg’s 175th anniversary in 2017 and led to a virtual exhibition launched in June 2020.
The exhibition offers four connected ways to explore the institution’s history: a timeline, an interactive map, a digital collection and oral history interviews. Its historical sections draw on digitised material from POST Luxembourg’s archives, accompanied by explanations.
For readers interested in everyday communication, the subjects include postal professions and the daily life of a postal worker. Other sections examine radio communication between 1964 and 1994, telephone exchanges, the introduction of GSM and the digitisation of telecommunications networks.
Current and retired employees supplied interviews about events they witnessed or helped oversee. Their accounts give the exhibition a perspective that technical records alone cannot provide: how changes in communication were experienced by the people responsible for making services work.
Objects supply another part of the story. The report describes around 20 items presented through high-resolution, rotating views. One example is a pulse repeater, identified as a crucial component of EMD telephone exchanges from the 1950s onwards. Each object was photographed from 24 angles for detailed examination.
This material documents postal and telecommunications history, but the report does not reconstruct a particular remote community’s news delivery routes, newspaper readership or informal networks. It cannot establish which channel mattered most in an individual village.
Its contribution is more specific: it preserves evidence about the systems and workers behind communication before the internet, providing a documented starting point for understanding how Luxembourg stayed connected.
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