The History of the Telephone
"Things We Take for Granted" Department
Saturday, April 6. Good morning.
I was away for most of the week and knew I wouldn’t have time to write an installment of the story, so I am sharing some info on the history of the telephone—and, more interestingly, humans’ response to the arrival of this transformative technology.
I was reminded of how ubiquitous the phone has been in our lives for generations - and yet how its use has changed so dramatically over that same time - when I heard an anecdote on the wonderful podcast “Offline with Jon Favreau” about a college student who called her mother in a panic about a number she saw on her dorm room wall underneath something that looked like an outlet of some kind. She sent her mom a photo of it from her phone.
“Honey,” said the mom (I’m paraphrasing here), “that is a phone jack, and the number underneath is the extension number of the phone that used to be there.” She then had to explain that phones used to be attached to the wall by a cord and what an extension number was, and no, you couldn’t talk to your friends back at the dorm while you were in, say, the cafeteria.
I am old enough to remember “party lines,” where more than one household shared the same number, and if I remember correctly, the phone rang differently depending on which party the call was for. Also, yes, we had rotary phones when I was a kid. We still use the term “dialing” a number today, even though rotary phones fell out of use in, I think, the 1970s. I haven’t heard a “dial tone” since I ditched my landline.
(I don’t have many readers here who are much younger than me, but for those of you who are, a heads-up that some of this is going to be pretty mind-bending.)
Decades ago, I found a brochure in an archive from the Bell Telephone Company on how to use the telephone. The brochure was from the 1890s, if I remember correctly. As hard as it was for that college student to grasp that you didn’t have your phone with you everywhere back in the day, it may be just as hard for us to imagine a time when you couldn’t speak to someone over the phone wires. Or wireless. People had to learn how to communicate without seeing each other. Alas, I can’t find a copy of the brochure, but I remember admonishments to answer the phone with a greeting of some kind and to wait until the person on the other end of the line stopped talking before you began to speak.
Elisha Gray, Chicago Native, an American Inventor of the Telephone.
I had no idea that someone else had submitted a patent for the telephone in the same year (1876) that A.G. Bell had. And that that someone was from Chicago, no less. Gray had some interesting uses for the phone, which may partially explain why he isn’t the one who started a telephone company.
One of the problems (insofar as becoming famous for its invention) was that Elisha was more interested in the use of the telephone technology to transmit music and was less interested in using it for people to talk. (Which, if you think about the invention of the iPod before the iPhone, seems at least intuitive, if not prescient.) Thus, its earliest uses were in public entertainment forums. Here is an ad from 1877.
I think he was reading the room and meeting people where they were. People could not understand how the technology worked, and many were inclined to attribute less-than-scientific mechanisms. And why not. A writer for the Buffalo News opined that whatever enabled people to hear one another over vast distances was about as miraculous as R.V. Pierce’s “proven” patent medicine cures and the occult sciences. (While also promoting the doctor’s new hospital in Buffalo.)
Thomas Alva Edison, meanwhile, wisely focused on the potential of human spoken communication. The Trib reported on one of the first demonstrations in January 1879. (I love that a reporter is one of the guinea pigs. And that the operator warns the other participant: “Be careful how you talk; he is liable to print it.”)
The following year, there were many bemused reports of people attempting to use the phone in business. Here is a report from December 1880…Judging from the thoughts of the “Boston lady,” there was still an air of mystery around remote communication.
Another unsung inventor behind the invention of the telephone was Lewis Howard Latimer. Latimer worked with Graham and Bell and drafted some of the schematics of the telephone for Bell’s patents.
This is what the first telephone looked like:
This is what many telephones looked like up until 1930:
1930: The Introduction of the Dial Telephone.
In 1930, the dial telephone came along. Previously, people had just picked up the horn-like speaker and told the operator who they wanted to talk to. Now, they had to know the number and do it themselves. People weren’t happy about it. This is from the U.S. Senate archives:
VIDEO: AT&T produced instructional films to accompany the introduction of dial telephones to guide subscribers in how to use the new technology.
Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center
One phone user who did not “accept the dial” was Senator Carter Glass of Virginia. When the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, by then a subsidiary of AT&T, installed dial telephones on the Senate side of the Capitol in May 1930, the 72-year-old veteran lawmaker introduced a resolution:
Whereas dial telephones are more difficult to operate than are manual telephones; and Whereas Senators are required, since the installation of dial phones in the Capitol, to perform the duties of telephone operators in order to enjoy the benefits of telephone service; and Whereas dial telephones have failed to expedite telephone service; Therefore be it resolved that the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate is authorized and directed to order the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. to replace with manual phones within 30 days after the adoption of this resolution, all dial telephones in the Senate wing of the United States Capitol and in the Senate office building.
I just realized that kids these days have no idea what a dial tone was. The video plays one.
Even as late as 1951, pamphlets were offered explaining what a phone was and how to use it properly. My favorite line is, “Do not shout. Speak as if the other person were in the same room.”
There are still guides today on “telephone manners,” though they’re mostly about how to sell things or ask for money without being hung up on. (Again, notice the terminology…that goes back to when you hung that horn-shaped contraption on its cradle.)
Oh, I could go on! But will stop now. If there’s a thread running through everything else I’ve been writing about, it’s that there’s nothing new about our oh-so-human responses to novelty.
Thanks for reading!
Jen
Resources:
AT&T Guide on the Use of the New Dial Phones (1931 film) - YouTube
Pamphlet on how to use a phone (1951) - classicrotaryphones.com
History of the Telephone in America - Wikipedia
How To Talk on the Phone (2023) - wikiHow
I think dial phones were still common in the 80s. I know our house had one for most of that decade at least.
My siblings and I sometimes test each other as to what our pre-dial telephone number was. Don't ask how old we are.