Telephone History

[Jim Katen]

I know I can google that stuff, but I thought it might make for an interesting discussion. 

I freely admit  that I haven't attended to the study of telephone history as much as I should have, so I found this curious. The seller of today's 1912 house found the attached buisness cards inside the walls of an older structure on the property.  He believes that the older structure was a cabin that the builder lived in while constructing the main house. It's his contention that the business cards pre-date 1912. This seems unlikely to me because I doubt that telephones were in widespread use at that time. Of course, given the gaping maw in my knowledge of this subject, I could be wrong. The middle card shows a graphic of a candlestick phone without a dial - that probably narrows the date range. 

I'm also curious about the phone numbers. When I was a kid I remember neighborhood telephone exhange numbers that begin with neighborhood names, but they always used the first two letters of the exhange name followed by a single numeral, then followed by a 4-digit number. The numbers on two of these cards seem to have just 6 digits. And what's with "Sunnyside Central Farmers 7 X"? Did you just pick up the phone and ask the operator for "Sunnyside Central Farmers 7 X"? If so, why not just ask for "A Osterback."? There couldn't have been that many A. Osterbacks. 

And while we're at it, what's up with "Wood Saw." Two different reps? Two different eras? 

[Chad Fabry]

I have nothing to add except that I suspect the cards represent a succession of wood suppliers, each hung on the same nail over the previous supplier.

And, at one time I had a candlestick phone w/o a dial. I don't remember what happened to it (I may still have it) but, I remember the patent date was 1904.

The builder living in the structure while building the house may or may not be true. The premise does not preclude the possibility that others occupied the structure after the house was built.     

[Les]

We had the wall phone with crank.  Pick up receiver, crank four or five revolutions, wait and tell operator a five character "number".  Used until 1955.  sometimes it was 44rf6, iv5423, or if shopping for a car BR549. 

[Jerry Simon]

591, wait for the dial tone, dial 6

Edited August 9 by Jerry Simon

[hausdok]

It's an interesting question.

I remember stick telephones but not in my home, they were inside the Spingarn mansion where my brother and I played as kids. One to a bedroom and I think they were part of an intercom system, but there was a telephone exchange of sorts on the wall of the kitchen that, as I picture it in my mind now, probably connected to the town's telephone exchange.

When I was very small, we had a simple black table phone without a dial. One just picked up the phone, waited for an operator to say, "Number Please" and you gave them a number, there'd be a hum on the line, and then the place one called would pick up with a, "Hello." Our number was 393. I think that black bakelite phone had followed stick phones. With either, just picking up the phone sounded a tone or turned on a light at the operator's keyboard which signaled her to come on the phone and ask what number one wanted. I was always enchanted with the phones I saw in old movies where they were either big boxes on the wall or stick phones with cranks where people would pick the phone up, crank a handle like on a military field phone, to reach the operator.

If you wanted to call long distance, you told the operator which town or city and the party's number, she'd tell you to wait, and then she'd come back on the line and say, "Your party is connected," you'd thank her and say, "Hello?" to signal the other party to talk.

Whenever you'd receive a long-distance call, you'd pick up the receiver and hear the operator say, "Long distance call for Mr. Hugh O'Handley or Collect call for Mr. Hugh O'Handley from ___________, will you accept the call?", you'd respond, "OK," for a paid call or "I accept," or, "I don't accept," for collect calls.

There were three women working in the telephone exchange, a pink brick building on Main Street. At least, there were only three in there when my kindergarten class went there one day on a field trip (Another day we went on the NYC train to Millerton and back). By the time I was about 8, they'd changed over to dial phones. At first, after we got dial phones if one needed to call long distance, one would dial zero, wait for Mrs. Braisey, and use the old procedure, but eventually one only needed to dial 1 and then the number to be connected. Mrs. Braisey worked there to handle calls where the "operator" was needed until another exchange in Poughkeepsie took over. I only knew Mrs. Braisey by name, because when I was older and the phones became fully operated, she opened a soda fountain in the basement of that building where we used to pay a nickel for a malt or an egg-cream, some kind of delicious concoction made of carbonated water and syrup without an egg, so I don't know why it was called an egg-cream. We kids preferred going to Mrs. Braisey's fountain over Rothstein's drug store because Dan Rothstein smoked cigars like they were going out of style and you had to walk through fog to get to the back of that store where the soda fountain and comic book rack were. A malt in that place tasted like cigars.

Parts of town were on party lines. When someone on that line was called, everyone's phones would ring, and anyone hearing their phone ring would pick up. If the call was for Mrs. Brown, the operator would say, "Call for Mrs. Brown," and everyone not Mrs. Brown or someone at her phone who'd picked up would hang up, and you'd begin talking. I heard from other kids whose phones were on party lines that busybodies would sometimes fake a hangup and remain on the line to snoop. I don't know if that was true, but it was why my father always told us we weren't on a party line.

I had my first girlfriend when I was about 12 or 13. She lived in Millerton, and I got into a lot of trouble because I would call her every night on the upstairs hall phone. For privacy, I used to stretch that long slinky-like line into my parents' bedroom, close the door and slip under my dad's bed. You'd have to always be listening because sometimes one of the other kids would sneak onto the line downstairs to snoop. Sometimes Dad or Mom would come on the phone, realize I was on the phone again and shout, "Michael, get off this damned phone. How many times do I have to tell you?" When the phone bill came, I would really catch hell, because a call to Millerton just ten miles away was long distance and was still a long-distance call when I'd grown up and moved away.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!
Mike

[Rob Amaral]

We had (1953) the ol' Western Electric 'dial' phone   MO-8-_____. No area code... it was a party line... often you'd pick it up and there would be two parties in conversation....      The 'phone company' was for quite a while there, a major 'good' thing until it got 'busted up'...   An old timer in the phone company here in Boston was worried that the 'break up' (of Ma Bell) would lead to massive 'service' issues during storms, etc.   It turned-out alright actually....  Those are great biz cards... probably saw-sharpening-guys I'd imagine..       

[John Ghent]

We too had party line phones.  Loved to listen to what was going on in the neighborhood.  Each home on the line had a separate ring sequence so you could tell if it was your call or your neighbors.  Click the cradle to get the operator to make a call out.  No dials, just tell the operator who you wanted.