A Milwaukee museum played a key role in the realization of an Iron Curtain sculpture unveiled on May 13, 2011, at the National Churchill Museum in Fulton, MO. The Bob Paquette Microphone Museum loaned vintage microphones to use as models for a piece that portrays Winston Churchill giving his famous 1946 "Sinews of Peace" speech at Westminster College in Fulton.

Historians often mark the speech as the beginning of the Cold War, and the half-ton, bronze sculpture portrays the British leader - behind a bank of microphones - at the exact moment in the address when he announced that an "iron curtain" had descended across Europe. The models loaned by the museum are the same type used for Churchill's speech.

The microphones that were used for the sculpture, Western Electric models 618 and 633A, are once again on display at the Bob Paquette Microphone Museum, which has been dedicated to the history and evolution of the microphone since 1970. More than 1,000 microphones are in its collection, most pre-dating 1950.

The museum, free and open to the public, is located at Select Sound Service, Inc., at 107 E. National Ave., Milwaukee.