PEOPLE ARE USING THEM in their cars, commercial airliners, golf carts, their back yards and every room in their homes.
They are using them to say ”I love you,” shop for clothing, summon paramedics, get the latest ball scores, sell insurance and dissuade the suicidal. How many there are is difficult to say. We know there are about 120 million telephone lines in the United States and about 425 million in the world, but one line can have many extensions-and so no one knows for sure how many telephones there are right now.
But at a time when many Americans say they don`t have enough time to devote to their careers and children, they are spending more time on the telephone-about 25 percent more time since 1980, according to the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC says that only a small fraction of the increase is the result of the use of computers and facsimiles and that residential use of the telephone is growing at about the same pace as business.
Telephones are everywhere. In 1988, an expedition to Mt. Everest sent back progress reports using a cellular phone and facsimile (fax) machine. Telephones are available to the inmates of all state prisons except Ohio`s, and about half the states allow them to receive calls as well (Illinois does not).
Very few of the 5 billion pairs of ears in the world are out of the range of the telephone. If you need to talk to President Bush, you can call him at 202-456-1414, and if you want to tell Queen Elizabeth you`ll be late for tea, you can ring her up at 011-44-71-930-4832.
The global telephone network is by far the largest integrated machine in the world. Americans make so many international calls that it has become a factor in the balance-of-payments problem. In 1988, the United States sent abroad $2 billion more than it got back in overseas calling-a fair piece of the $126 billion trade deficit.
One factor in the increased telephone use is lower long-distance rates, which followed the breakup of the American Telephone & Telegraph monolith in 1984. Another is the growth in 800 numbers, which are free to the caller, and 900 numbers, which require the caller to pay. Increasingly, Americans are letting their fingers do the walking by using the telephone for products, services and information. People are using these dialing services for stock-market quotes, advice on how to pray, jokes, the latest home-mortgage interest rates and all the action in yesterday`s soap operas.
Office workers are using fax machines to order lunch, exchange recipes, plan weddings and flirt with someone in the next building. While he was the world`s most famous political prisoner earlier this year, Nelson Mandela used a fax machine to negotiate the terms of his release and to draw the outlines of the future of South Africa.
Research indicates that answering machines, now used in 28 percent of America`s households, cause people to make and receive more calls, and that users of cellular car phones are making calls that previously they would not have had time to make.
Doing without the telephone is unthinkable. It is so ingrained in our lives that its use is habitual rather than conscious. It is practically an extension of the human body.
This familiarity has robbed us of the wonder of an invention that converts spoken words into electrical waves, transmits them along a line and reconverts them into sound that is so true that there is often no need to ask who is at the other end. It is easy to forget that before the telephone, the experience of talking to someone far away occurred only among the gods of mythology. . . .
March 7, 1876-The most valuable patent ever issued-No. 174,465-goes to Alexander Graham Bell. Had Bell been just a few hours later in getting his designs to the patent office, Elisha Gray would have gotten credit for the telephone, and what we know today as the Bell System might now be known as the Gray System.
Just three days later, Bell reached out and touched Thomas Watson, an electrician, who was standing 40 feet away in the next room. Bell was about to test his transmitter with something from Shakespeare when he accidentally spilled some acid and blurted out: ”Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.”
The following autumn, Bell`s lawyer offered the patent to the mighty Western Union Co. for $100,000; he was turned down, contemptuously.
Some of the first telephone users suffered from stage fright, and in 1877 Bell and his business partners began advertising their new gadget with this promise: ”Conversations can be easily carried on after slight practice and with occasional repetitions of a word or sentence.”
April 4, 1877-The first telephone is installed in a private home-that of Charles Williams of Somerville, Mass. Since there was no one else to call, Williams had a line run to his Boston office so his wife could reach him during the day.
For many years, the telephone company discouraged the use of the phone as a social instrument, but customers persisted in using the electronic marvel for ”trivial gossip,” and so in the 1920s it began encouraging the use of the telephone for personal conversations.
1877-The first telephone exchange is put into operation in Boston by Edwin Holmes, who operated an electric burglar-alarm business. This first switchboard was connected to telephones in six offices that bought alarms from Holmes. It served as a telephone system by day and a burglar-alarm system by night.
It was a complicated setup, but the important thing here is that it was the first telephone system; without the exchange, every telephone would need a separate line to every other telephone. This led to networks covering entire states, then entire nations and finally the entire world. The exchange permitted endless social contacts, even between strangers, in ways never before possible.
1878-The first phone is installed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Timing has always been a key factor in the trading of securities, and the telephone quickly revolutionized Wall Street operations. Within a few years, many brokers had telephones linking their offices with the trading floor.
The basic impact of the telephone on the financial markets was to increase the liquidity of securities, making it easier for businesses to raise capital and thereby facilitating the nation`s economic expansion.
J.P. Morgan is credited with averting a financial panic in 1907 by wheeling and dealing on the telephone between banks in New York, Chicago and St. Louis.
1878-Emma M. Nutt, a former telegraph operator, is hired as the first female telephone operator. The first operators were young boys, but they proved unsuitable because of foul language and practical jokes.
The telephone, along with the typewriter, were wedges that got women into the American office buildng. This in turn brought about an important new figure in American life-the operator, called ”Central.”
Central was a locally known figure, and did more than just connect people on the telephone. In addition to responding to emergencies, Central might be asked to call back in 15 minutes to remind one to take the cake out of the oven, and people would put the receiver in their baby`s cradle so Central could be alerted to its crying.
1879-The early telephone exchanges listed only the names of subscribers to the service, and switchboard operators had to memorize all of them in order to connect one to the other.
The idea of telephone numbers was resisted by customers as an affront to individuality and personal identification. But during a measles epidemic in Lowell, Mass., a local physician recommended assigning numbers because he feared that the town`s telephone network would collapse if the operators became ill. The practicality of the arrangement was appreciated, and the use of numbers began throughout the nation.
1880-Mark Twain writes a sketch titled ”A Telephone Conversation”; it is the beginning of a rich trove of telephone imagery in literature that lasted until about the end of World War II, when we began to take the instrument for granted and it lost its wonder.
The telephone still reigns as the single most convenient prop in fiction, however, for it enables two people to engage in dialogue without being in the same place. Even today, the telephone is almost indispensable to mystery and spy novels.
1885-The construction of the world`s first skyscraper is completed in Chicago. The 10-story, steel-skeleton structure was built by the Home Insurance Co. The telephone made possible the widespread use of the skyscraper in big cities, for without it, messages would have to be carried from one place to another and there wouldn`t be enough elevators to accommodate all the messengers.
In the early days of the telephone, there were claims it would have a negative impact in cities, and the local phone company was frequently targeted by reformers as an ally of criminal elements. Almost simultaneously, there were forecasts that crime would dwindle to practically nothing because, once telephones were everywhere and police could be notified instantaneously, there would be little chance that criminals could escape.
The truth is that the telephone is both a creator and predator of crime. It facilitated illegal gambling operations and brought the call girl onto the scene, and after Prohibition, the bootleggers made full use of the new method of communication. But it also made it easier to trace criminals on the run and opened up the whole controversial area of wiretapping by law-enforcement officials.
1889-The pay phone is invented by William Gray (no relation to Elisha), who installed the first one in a Hartford, Conn., bank. Necessity was the mother of his invention: Gray wanted to call his sick wife at home one day, but his foreman refused permission-even though Gray offered to pay for the call. So Gray devised a telephone that anyone could use at any time-as long as they had change.
The first telephone booths were made of carved oak and sometimes had draperies. In hotels, people would stand in front of them and wait, thinking they were elevators. In restaurants they were sometimes mistaken for public restrooms, with disturbing results.
Today, there are 2 million phone booths in the United States alone.
And where would Clark Kent be without one? He first used a phone booth to change into Superman in a 1949 issue of D.C. Comics.
1892-The first direct-dial phone goes into service in La Porte, Ind. It is the invention of Almon Strowger, an undertaker who believed that one of the local phone operators (who happened to be the wife of a competitor) was diverting all calls for undertakers to her husband`s funeral parlor.
1893-The first of Bell`s telephone patents expires, bringing about a flood of independent phone companies and expansion of telephone use.
1901-At first, telephone lines had to be made out of expensive, thick copper wire, making long-distance calling cost-prohibitive. But a less-expensive method was developed by Michael Pupin, a Yugoslav-American physicist, and purchased by the Bell Telephone Co. in 1901. By 1915, long-distance telephony became a fact with the opening of a line between New York and San Francisco.
1920-Joseph Stalin vetoes Leon Trotsky`s plans to build a modern telephone system in the wake of the Russian Revolution. ”It will unmake our work,” Stalin says. ”No greater instrument for counterrevolution and conspiracy can be imagined.”
1924-Popular music develops whole songs around the telephone, and by far the best-known is Irving Berlin`s ”All Alone.”
All alone-I`m so all alone,
There is no one else but you.
All alone by the telephone
Waiting for a ring. . . .
The number of popular songs, ranging from Irving Berlin to the Beatles, using telephone imagery is impossible to calculate. Bandleader Glenn Miller had a major hit with ”Pennsylvania 6-5000,” which was the number of the Blue Room of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York, where many of the band`s radio broadcasts originated. In the `60s, the Marvelettes had ”Beechwood 4-5789,” and in the `70s, the band Sugarloaf had a hit called ”Don`t Call Us, We`ll Call You,” which began and ended with the sound of a Touch-Tone seven-digit number widely rumored to be that of the White House.
