The Please Touch museum path is dedicated to our blind and visually impaired visitors as well as all other curious and enquiring souls that want to explore and learn about our technological heritage through their senses.
The path’s first section presents the history of postal services from Antiquity to today. Visitors can touch a milestone, which once stood next to a Roman road and informed travellers how far everything was. They can read the legend of Saint Ulrich on a medieval scroll, learn how fast messages travelled in the past, hear the proclamation of a town crier, listen to the melodies of the post horn, and touch various types of writing instruments. In 1919, Slovenians issued our first postage stamps, the Verigar series. The museum has an enlarged stamp from this series, which visitors can touch. The collection also includes various means of transport, postal packages, a bumping table, mailbags, and mailsacks.
The latter part of the exhibition offers insight into the history of telecommunications from telegraphs to smartphones. Visitors can use a Morse telegraph and teleprinters, test themselves in making phone calls with the help of manual, automatic and digital switchboards, and reminiscent about their first mobile phone. Just a few years ago, it was mostly the blind and visually impaired who handled the profession of a switchboard telephonist. The exhibition also offers visitors the opportunity to listen to a short history of the first mobile phones and feel the 3D model of the world’s first mobile phone.
The Please Touch museum path is a collaboration with the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, University of Ljubljana.