Throughout the ages, there have been many ages.

There was the Ice Age, the Stone Age, and for me right now, the Middle Ages. Along came the Industrial Age, often called the Industrial Revolution. Then came the Age of Technology and the Space Age.

I have heard it said that we are now in the Age of Information and Communication.

I have discovered several communication relics in my long walks throughout the American Tobacco Historic District. There was an old black phone, surely from the first quarter of the last century, mounted to a post in the Bull Building. Last week I discovered a phone in a weather-proof box alongside the tracks used by the trains unloading coal for the power plant.

Using my imagination, I envisioned American Tobacco Company employees communicating with train conductors or supervisors in the power plant.

Interestingly enough, the restoration and reconstruction of this sixteen acre campus is riddled with communication devices. I think more construction workers than not are equipped with either a two-way radio or a cell phone. Trudging up the 140 steps from the ground floor of the Crowe Building to the roof, I constantly pass workers talking on cell phones to supervisors.

The bits and pieces of conversations I pick up reveal communications about material being moved from one place to another or times for certain work to begin on certain projects.

When I think ahead to the tenants of this refurbished campus, companies like Compuware, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Mckinney & Silver, companies with international clients, I can clearly see that this is the Age of Information and Communication.

So much of the communication carried on by the future tenants of the Historic District will be in cyberspace, but I'm confident that some of these old phone relics will be left around as a reminder of what used to be.

A final thought, I am not up on my history, but had Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone when the Bull Building was constructed in 1874?

Thank you Mr. Bell for helping us stay in touch.