"Who would ever want to use one?" ~ Tidbits of Telephone History

 

A question that has entered my peripheral research time and again centers around whether or not my characters’ households would own a telephone. Given the era of the story, that might seem like a no-brainer, but actually it is a question never easily answered. The biggest factors for each story depend upon locales. Are settings urban or rural? In well-off households or less so? Where did the lines run and how far out did they reach during the years in which my story takes place? What was the rate of home phone ownership there at that time? Would it have been likely that this character would have owned such a resource?

Ah, such rabbit trails! There’s a little wiggle room of course, but not much in my desire for historical and story accuracy.

I’m asking myself that question in another work-in-progress today. Would these people, in this small town, have their own telephone, or would they have to go to another place to use a public telephone? At the workplace or a nearby store perhaps. I continue my quest to be sure. In the process, I uncover some interesting historical tidbits about the telephone that drew a grin:

In 1876, when President Rutherford B. Hayes examined the telephone for the first time, he said to Alexander Graham Bell: “That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?” (I suppose some of us still feel that way.)

The same year, as Bell struggled with his company, he offered to sell the patent to Western Union for $100,000 and was roundly turned down. Western Union’s reply:

“We do not see that this device will be ever capable of sending recognizable speech over a distance of several miles. Messer Hubbard and Bell want to install one of their ‘telephone devices’ in every city. The idea is idiotic on the face of it. Furthermore, why would any person want to use this ungainly and impractical device when he can send a messenger to the telegraph office and have a clear written message sent to any large city in the United States? … Mr. G.G. Hubbard’s fanciful predictions, while they sound rosy, are based on wild-eyed imagination and lack of understanding of the technical and economic facts of the situation, and a posture of ignoring the obvious limitations of his device, which is hardly more than a toy … This device is inherently of no use to us. We do not recommend its purchase.”

I bet bet they regretted that decision for a long, long time.

Over in Britain, they thought the device might be useful to Americans because we lacked domestic servants, while in that country, there was a “superabundance of messengers, errand boys and things of that kind.” (Ah. . .servants. What a novelty.)

Engineers and visionaries saw it differently. They looked to the future of the telephone a lot like we view space travel today. I presume that's what G.G. Hubbard's "fanciful predictions" seemed like.

When we view the telephone in light of the past, it’s easy to see how the general public had the same hesitancies about the new device as we’ve had about the internet and our various "smart" technologies today. There were concerns about invasion of privacy back then too—a very real concern with having to use the telephone in a public place. Then, once lines were brought house to house, there was the invasion of eavesdroppers over the shared lines. Even the telephone operators were privy to more private conversations than was probably fit for public consumption.

"AHOY!"

Nowadays we have voice mail to collect our phone calls and some of us still use answering machines to screen our calls. We can leave greetings on them for when the phone picks up. But what about that first, "Hello, Musches"? It was Thomas Edison who suggested we say hello when picking up a ringing phone. Bell's suggestion that we answer with a smart, "Ahoy" never caught on. (I might have to try that sometime.)

Telephone use became common to nearly everyone during the first half of the 1900s (though I still have that conundrum of how far lines reached and when). In 1946, Bell's company hired 250,000 women as switchboard operators for both public and business services.

They say President Lyndon Johnson's preferred method of handling white house communications and accomplishing most presidential work was the telephone, and he used it profusely. In fact, when he took office after President Kennedy's death, he had phones installed in so many places around the white house, he could literally move from phone to phone like a relay system, continuing conversations while going about his tasks. There were phones on coffee tables, in bathrooms, and on window sills. Even a phone beneath both the dinner table and the hammock. Not only did he prefer working by telephone, but LBJ is known to have secretly taped at least 9000 of his conversations😮. He used the transcripts to review his daily work. 6000 of them are available through the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.

Another fun bit of history is the ring system. Nowadays, we select a tone we want to hear when our cell phone rings. We can pick jazzy music or funny movie lines. Back in the early days of home phones and the party line, individual households had their home's ring pattern to help them know if the call was for their house or for another family on their line. It might be two short rings followed by two long, or one long and three short, and so on. I'm old enough to remember when my grandparents and our family got a "private line".

Now we're back to wondering who might be listening in. Not because of party lines of course, but because of concerns we have about Big Brother. 

What foreseeable changes do you think are coming to our ways of communicating? Will you welcome them, or do you abhor the notions?

Do you have a favorite read featuring old telephone systems or characters who are switchboard operators? One of my favorites lately is Candice Patterson's Saving Mrs. Roosevelt, in which Coast Guard characters include switchboard operators and spies on the home front during WWII.

There are a host of terrific Christian novels out there featuring switchboard operators. I had fun in my novel The Love Coward involving an off-scene operator who had the habit of spreading bits of gossip she'd overheard on the line, but she could be very helpful too. 

Do you find yourself ever being nostalgic about those old telephone days when we were still attached to the wall instead of the computer? So many useful storylines remain to be written! I still crack up when Oliver Wendell Douglas has to climb the telephone pole to answer the telephone on Green Acres. 

One of the richest blessings I've had lately regarding modern telephone technology happened only this morning as I was writing this post. A reader looked me up and gave me a call. She had stumbled upon Season of My Enemy at her library, and because of some connections she had to a town I mentioned in the book, she decided to search me out. Surprisingly, once she found me online, she discovered we had some close ties through my immediate family, so she rang me. We had a lovely time acquainting ourselves. I so appreciated the technology that brought that about!

Researching tidbits of telephone history has kept me hopping with several of my books. Here are a few titles where that research has played out.

 

       

The Love Coward (Post WWII, 1947), Season of My Enemy (1944-1947), The Deepest Sigh (1915-1919), The Brightest Hope (1924)

Looking back nostalgically,

Naomi

naomimusch.com

Galt & Bro. Jeweler's - A Glittering Legacy

By Tiffany Amber Stockton

Last month, I shared about the Delaware's State Fair and the history of fairs throughout the "First State." If you missed that post, you can read it here: https://www.hhhistory.com/2019/02/the-first-states-first-state-fair-book.html.

Just last night, I was chatting with a friend about shared commonalities from living around the Chesapeake Bay for a time. We reminisced about places we visited, and in a part of that conversation, I shared about my family's ties to Washington, D.C., as well as some of the elite, including several presidents. Here's a little glimpse of my personal family history as seen through the eyes of one of the oldest and continuously operated jewelry stores in the nation.

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A Glittering Legacy

stamp on brown paper showing opening date
also etched on all packages delivered from the shop

George Washington didn't sleep here, but Abraham Lincoln shopped here.

So did Jefferson Davis and Alexander Graham Bell, J. Edgar Hoover and John F. Kennedy, and practically every well-heeled luminary who has passed through Washington, D.C., over the past 200 years.

In 1802, James Galt (a cousin of mine many times removed) opened his "clock and watch" business on the promise that he would "keep a few good watches and material for sale at reasonable prices." Sadly, in 2001, the store was forced to close its doors, but 200 years in continuous operation is quite impressive! Now, the Galt & Bro. legacy continues as Galt Couture!

1107 Pennsylvania Ave. storefront

Throughout its many years in business, leather-bound store ledgers documented the visits and recorded the accounts of people like "Hon. Abraham Lincoln," as well as the "Hon. Jefferson Davis," who in 1860 purchased charms, buttons, shawl pins, and a gold thimble, and "Gen. Ulysses S. Grant," who six years later purchased two butter knives and a sugar tong. These hand-written ledgers and yellowed customer cards became much more of a treasure than the Gorham silver or diamond-and-pearl adornments rumored to be quite favored by Mary Todd Lincoln...a woman whose much-criticized obsession with spending was documented in faded script in the ledgers.

Among some of these hand-written items are customer cards of "Mrs. F.D. Roosevelt," and "Mrs. Wm. H. Taft," and a copy of Washington's first phone directory -- a single page from 1878 with "Galt" as the only name listed under "Jeweler." How amazing is that? To be the only jeweler in the city and to boast a clientele that can only be described as city's elite!

interior of Galt & Bros. Jewelry

The shop reflected its posh patronage too. Chandeliers sparkled overhead, oriental carpets muffled footsteps, and heavy, ice-blue damask curtains blocked the sun, while a massive grandfather clock stood sentry. This place was much more than a jewelry store. Other inventory items included silver keychains, leather watchbands, linen napkins and tablecloths, a grand silver tea service, and a commemorative Bicentennial plate, added in 1976 (the year I was born).

Although I never stepped inside the shop when it was open, I do know the last Galt to operate the business was Norman Galt, whose wife, Edith Bolling Galt, inherited it upon his death and went on to become the wife of President Woodrow Wilson. I wrote a post a couple years ago about this, as she was my grandfather's first cousin on my mother's side.

Galt & Bros. storefront at 1107 Pennsylvania Ave.
(photo copyright Alamy)

Considering the notable list of names who frequented this shop, it's no surprise to also learn the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Washington Historical Society are all itching to inherit the Galt archives.

After 200 years in Washington, that's a pretty amazing legacy. One of these years, I intend to write a series focusing on this jewelry store and the people who were patrons and customers. It will be exciting to research not only the story but my own family's history too. Washington, D.C. elite in the 1800s and 1900s. Sounds like fun to me!!

* * * * *

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN:

* Do you have any notable names or stories like this in YOUR family history?

* What item or type of item would entice you to shop at Galt & Bros. if you were in Washington, D.C. during its years of operation?

* What was your favorite part about today's post?

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BIO

Tiffany Amber Stockton has been crafting and embellishing stories since childhood, when she was accused of having a very active imagination and cited with talking entirely too much. Today, she has honed those childhood skills to become an award-winning and best-selling author and speaker who is also an advocate for literacy as an educational consultant with Usborne Books. On the side, she dabbles in the health & wellness and personal development industry, helping others become their best from the inside out.

She lives with her husband and fellow author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, along with their two children and two dogs in Colorado. She has sold twenty (21) books so far and is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, and LinkedIn

The Dawn of the Telephone!

By Tiffany Amber Stockton

Last month, I shared about the this history of hot air balloons and showcased a festival here in my town that happens every year. If you missed that post, you can read it here: https://www.hhhistory.com/2018/09/hot-air-balloon-flights-history-of.html.

Now, let's move from our bodies traveling through the air to our voices traveling over wires and cables.

* * * * *

The Dawn of the Telephone

First telephone call made

I don't know about you, but I personally find the cell phones we use today to be a distraction and relationship separator rather than a relationship connector, which is what the first telephone accomplished. Now, some could argue that our modern cell phones connect us to the world at large and connect us to information at our fingertips, and this is true. However, I'm old-school, I'll admit it. I still love to actually talk face to face with someone rather than send off a text. Can you imagine what Alexander Graham Bell would say if he were still alive today and saw how far his invention had come?

Bell's First Telephone

Many don't know this, but a man by the name of Robert Hooke created an acoustic string telephone that conveyed sound over a taut extended wire by mechanical vibrations way back in 1667! That's over two-hundred years before Bell made his first telephone call over outdoor wires. Sound transmission via vibration had been happening for hundreds of years prior to that too. It wasn't until 1874, though, that Bell conceived the theoretical concept for the telephone while on vacation at his parents' farm near Brantford, Canada. Alexander Melville Bell (his father) recorded notes of his son's conversation in his personal journal.

early model wired telephone

Two years later, on February 14, 1876, Elisha Gray (founder of the Western Electric Manufacturing Company) sent his lawyer to the patent office in Washington, D.C. with a patent caveat for the telephone. Two hours after that, Alexander Graham Bell's lawyer arrived at the same patent office with a full patent application and a request that it be filed immediately in the cash receipts blotter. It was. About two hours later, Gray's caveat was filed in the blotter. He could have converted his caveat to a full application and contested Bell's priority, but his lawyer advised against it, so the patent was awarded to Bell.

In March, Bell successfully transmitted speech to his assistant, saying "Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!" using a liquid transmitter as described in Gray's caveat, and Bell's own electromagnetic receiver. Can you imagine the excitement in realizing your invention worked?! And it all started with a theory. In August of that same year, Bell made the world's first long distance telephone call (about 6 miles), but in October, Bell and Watson demonstrated the first two-way phone call over outdoor wires between Boston and Cambridge.

Switchboard operators

All of this happened in the same year America turned 100 years old. How fitting to celebrate such a monumental birthday AND introduce a device that would experience revolutionary changes over the next century and eventually connect the world via voice over cellular antennas.

Rotary dial telephone

The first underground cable was laid in 1914, and that led to the rise in popularity of the switchboard operators, who fielded all the calls and connected them far beyond their local town. There had been operators in existence for the past thirty years, but most of the calls they received were quite close to home. The first transcontinental call was made in 1915 from New York to San Francisco, and later that year, the first transmission of speech across the Atlantic Ocean occurred from Virginia to France.

Cellular phones over the years

Today, cell phones have taken over telephone communication, but did you know the first proposition for the provision of mobile telephone service occurred in 1947? That's 70 years ago! Not surprisingly, the proposition came from two Bell Labs engineers, so the credit again goes to Bell. However, about twenty-five years later, a rival came onto the scene, and the first hand-held cell phone call was made by a Motorola employee (Martin Cooper) to Joel Engel, head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs. Prior to that, Bell had pretty much maintained a monopoly on communication via telephone. Not a bad run at all for about one hundred years. No matter what happens, Bell's legacy will always be remembered.

* * * * *

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN:

* Do you remember the very first telephone your family owned? What style or type was it?

* Have you ever made a phone call where you had to speak to the operator first?

* How many different kinds of phones have you used in your lifetime to make a phone call?

* What did you like most about today's post?

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BIO

Tiffany Amber Stockton has been crafting and embellishing stories since childhood, when she was accused of having a very active imagination and cited with talking entirely too much. Today, she has honed those childhood skills to become an author and speaker who also works as a force for literacy as an educational consultant with Usborne Books. On the side, she dabbles in the health & wellness and personal development industry, helping others become their best from the inside out.

She lives with her husband and fellow author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, along with their two children and two dogs: Nova, a Shiba-Inu/Chihuahua mix and Nugget a Corgi/Chihuahua mix, in Colorado. She has sold twenty (21) books so far and is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, and LinkedIn.

Alexander Graham Bell and the Deaf Community

As I wrote my most recent release, Heartfelt Echoes, which is part of the First Love Forever Romance Collection, I found myself challenged in a new way. Because both my hero and heroine in that story are deaf, I had to be careful to not use any sounds in my writing. Their deafness caused me to really think about how to convey a scene without one of the senses we take for granted. In order to get this right, I spent a lot of time researching deaf education, deaf culture, and other topics related to deafness. Through that research, one of the interesting things I learned was the role that a fairly famous man played in the deaf culture.

Most everyone has heard of Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell and his invention of the telephone. We reap the benefits of that famous discovery and other lesser-known ones by Bell, even today. However, what many of you may not know is that Bell did a lifetime of research and work with both elocution (the study of speech in grammar, pronunciation, and tone), and also with the deaf community. Perhaps this interest came about because his mother—and later his wife--were deaf.

In Bell’s youth, he started out as a rather lackluster student. It wasn’t until he was 15 or 16 and spent a year living with his grandfather that his studious side emerged. Under his grandfather’s careful direction, Bell learned how to speak clearly, concisely, and with conviction. Long discussions and hours of study with his grandfather turned this poor student into a lover of learning, which enabled Alexander Graham Bell to become a pupil-teacher at the Weston House Academy. There, he taught music and elocution, which provided him the ability to study Latin and Greek at the same school. He progressed on to tutoring various students in elocution, including deaf-mute students.

He began researching and tinkering with various inventions with sound, all while teaching or tutoring. But he and both his brothers grew ill. Younger brother Ted died of tuberculosis in 1867. In 1870, elder brother Melville died of complications from the same disease. At this point, Bell’s parents realized their remaining son, who had suffered and seemingly recovered from a debilitating illness around the time of Ted’s death, was still ill. They made the decision to move to the Americas in hopes the change of climate might help Alexander’s health. Bell wrapped up his tutoring business and moved across the pond to Canada with his parents, widowed sister-in-law, and her children.

Alexander Graham Bell in the upper right corner while teaching
the "Visible Speech System."

It was in Canada that Bell learned of the Mohawk Indian tribe. The Mohawk language was an unwritten one, and being the lover of language and elocution that he was, Bell took it upon himself to learn the language, then translate it into Visible Speech Symbols. This exercise led him to be named an Honorary Chief of the tribe—and it also led to various teaching positions at several American institutions for the education of the deaf. The teachers of those schools sought Bell out to teach them this “Visible Speech System.”

After six months in the United States, Bell was unsure what he wanted to do. He considered a return to London in order to pursue further education but ultimately settled on a life in Boston, teaching. With his father’s help, he made the move and began tutoring students in elocution. Many of his students were deaf. One very notable student of his was Helen Keller, who came to him as a young child.

Bell with his wife Mabel and two
daughters. Mabel was deaf.

But while Bell seemed to be one with a real heart to help the deaf community, there was one major issue. Bell, along with several other well-known people, felt that deafness should be eradicated from the face of the earth. So rather than teaching (or allowing deaf students to be taught) sign language, he preferred to make his deaf students learn to read lips and use verbal speech rather than signing. The idea behind this was to make the hearing world more comfortable and accepting of the deaf. This, in turn, would reduce the need for the deaf to group together in their own communities, which would limit the number of deaf people marrying a deaf partner. And in Bell’s estimation, that would reduce the number of children being born deaf. So he fought to make the deaf speak, rather than sign, their words—a practice known as “oralism.”

Because of Bell and other well-known proponents, oralism seemed to gain a foothold for a time. Many deaf people were forced to learn lip-reading, which could be an absolutely exhausting skill requiring great amounts of concentration. They were also forced to spend many hours practicing verbal speech, learning to adjust their lips and tongues just so in order to make intelligible sounds. Even today, many deaf people have learned both skills but have chosen to abandon them because of the concentration they require. Instead, they prefer to speak in American Sign Language, which requires far less mental energy on their parts and allows them to enjoy their relationships more.

It's Your Turn: Were you aware of Alexander Graham Bell’s work with elocution? Did you know he was a teacher of the deaf? Have you heard of “oralism” before? What are your feelings about that practice?

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered the western genre as a pre-teen when she swiped the only “horse” book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new love was born. Across the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns and fell in love with the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she has finaled and won in numerous writing competitions, and been on the ECPA best-seller list numerous times. In addition to writing, she has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, and her favorite—a full-time homemaker. Jennifer is active in American Christian Fiction Writers and lifetime member of the Florida Writers Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband, college-aged son, and four fur children.

First Love Forever Romance Collection

A first love is never easily forgotten...
and coming face to face with that person again can be awkward when the heartstrings are still holding on to the “what ifs.”

In settings from 1865 to 1910, nine couples are thrown back on the same path by life’s changes and challenges. A neighbor returns from law school. An heiress seeks a quick marriage. A soldier’s homecoming is painful. A family needs help. A prodigal son returns. A rogue aeronaut drops from the sky. A runaway bridegroom comes home. A letter for aid is sent. A doctor needs a nurse. Can love rekindle despite the separation of time and space?

Heartfelt Echoes by Jennifer Uhlarik
1875—Virginia City, Nevada: A short, urgent letter mentioning his childhood love, Millie Gordon, forces deaf Travis McCaffrey to turn to his estranged birth father for help rescuing the woman he can’t forget.