Museum of Global Communications (Porthcurno)
in Porthcurno, Cornwall.
This is an excellent museum, telling the fascinating story of telecommunications, starting with telegraphy.
From the museum website [1] :-
150 years ago, the first international telegraph cable was brought ashore at Porthcurno, connecting Britain to India and later other parts of the British Empire. Prior to this, messages to India could take six weeks or more but telegraphic messages took nine minutes. Porthcurno Telegraph Station, or PK as it became known in telegraphic code, became the most important station in the world in the late Victorian era. It faced many challenges during this time. Most significant was the challenge of wireless and the competition presented by Marconi, barely 10 miles away.
The main part of the museum is in Eastern House, opened in 1904 as part of the Porthcurno telegraph station. After World War Two, and until 1993 the building served as a training school for telecommunications students from around the world. The telegraph station closed in 1970, 100 years after the arrival of the first cable at Portcurno.
A major feature of the museum is the former top-secret bunker that hid the Porthcurno Telegraph Station in World War Two. This includes an extensive range of equipment from that time, with good displays and video presentations relating to the systems and to social and other aspects of life at Prthcurno in wartime. Energetic visitors can climb the 120 steps to the surface, via the bunker’s secret escape tunnel, hewn through solid granite.