November 13, 2010

Telephones? What do they want telephones for?

Cartoonist W. K. Haseldene's scathing view of an imaginary day at telephone headquarters.  The words of this post's title are spoken by directors at a board meeting.  Another director wonders why people can't be content with sending letters!

Haseldene's satire (The Mirror, 21 January 1911) obviously conveys public dissatisfaction with the low levels of service provided.  The Post Office took control of the country's telephone network at the beginning of 1912.

Haseldene found targets for his satire by reading the morning's papers and choosing a topic that was both "prominent and cartoonable."

www.cartoons.ac.uk/artists/william-kerridgehaseldene/biography

p.s. Any ideas why this excellent site chose a caricature of Tony Blair as its banner illustration?

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Digital Telephone Book by Elizabeth Chairopoulou is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.