Life without a telephone

A recent house move left me without a landline connection for a whole week - and all this despite meticulous advance planning.  

The problem apparently was located in a local exchange but the company (not) providing me with a telephone connection kept assuring me that their computers showed my telephone was connected and working.  They never took me seriously when I tried to convince them that their computers were wrong and I was right.  The fact that these numerous "service" calls were conducted via my mobile phone failed to make any impression on them.  If they took the simple expedient step of ringing my landline number, they would soon find out that the line was as dead as a dodo and their computers in need of a serious overhaul.  Luckily they saw the error of their ways by the end of the week and my telephone now works perfectly.

A few days after full service was restored, I received a phone call from a very nice lady in customer relations: she was ringing to check that my telephone was working properly - she rang on my landline phone.  If only they had done this on day one, in the fashion of the early telephone operators who used to make daily telephone calls to subscribers to check if the lines were working.

I'm not a fanatic telephone user - neither mobile nor landline - but I must confess to feeling isolated and cut off from the rest of society during my telephone-less week.  Not just cut off in the sense that I was unreachable by phone for a week but in the sense that, without a telephone connection in the society that I live in, you're not considered fully part of that society.  Many public bodies and services ask for your landline number first; a mobile number is useful but a landline presupposes a fixed address with a householder who is registered in all the correct places.  So with a landline connection, you feel more 'permanent' and an established member of the community.  When people ring your number, they know precisely in which building you are located.  I had to rely on mobile telephony but never felt really safe with it - units might run out during a long phone call, the battery could go flat, I could lose the charger, or quite simply forget to take the phone with me when leaving the house.

What made our grandparents feel permanent and 'connected' to their communities before the telephone became commonplace?  Or did they not need to feel connected?  As an experiment, going cold turkey with telephone use could tell us all a lot about how we view our own personal use and need of the telephone (in a similar fashion to going a whole week or month without television or Internet).  But we can never experience pre-telephony life in this way - what has been learned cannot be unlearned.

Manhattan, 1975

A fire breaks out in a New York telephone exchange and is allowed to consume cables and equipment for fifteen hours.  (Incidentally, when were fire sprinklers invented?)  You can well imagine the damage caused by a day-long fire: 90,000 customers in the Manhattan area had to make do without a telephone connection for more than three weeks.

This incident has gone down in telecommunications history as an epic example of what happens to people when they are deprived of their landline telephones.  A study was conducted by Wurtzel and Turner[1] which analysed how subscribers reacted to suddenly being without a telephone.  I know of no other similar incident on such a grand scale as this 1975 event and that’s probably why the impact of the fire, and the results of this survey are still cited today ad nauseum. 

How often do we get the opportunity to question a large group of people who are deprived of their means of communication with the outside world?  If such a fire occurred today, I don’t think any subscribers would even notice: they are so attached to their mobiles and e-mails that the loss of a landline is neither here nor there.  So an event such as this one in Manhattan was unique. 

The authors introduce their analysis with an acknowledgement that the academic community couldn’t care less about the telephone’s history.  They then proceed to discuss a few academics’ basic assumptions and self-evident truths, on which they base various concepts.  Examples will follow below but first, I wonder whether this lack of interest in any way connects to what I can only term a slipshod method of obtaining results?  Writers often make sweeping statements about telephone use, or its perception by its users, and then use this assumption to construct a conclusion.  The classic example for me will always be: ‘The telephone saved the sanity of farmers’ wives.’  No one has yet produced a farmer’s wife that has uttered these words herself.  Once this idea enters the debate then everyone uses it as a given and builds further on it.

Now to the examples of assumptions I mentioned above. 

1. The function of an urban, domestic telephone is to reduce loneliness, increase feelings of security, and maintain contact with family/friends.
2. The telephone “facilitates dispersion” of family members: “I’ll take that job 3,000 miles away – I can always ring the folks at home once a week.”
3. The telephone breaks down our urban lifespaces into “psychological networks”

What problems do I have with these assumptions?

1. Granted, these are some of the functions an urban, domestic telephone can perform, but not the only ones.  And certainly these functions vary according to the gender, class, race, etc. of the user.  Why - and if so, how - should the function of a telephone differ in an urban setting to that of a rural telephone? 
2. I’ve said this somewhere else (can’t remember where).  People are more mobile today than previous generations.  They change cities/countries/continents for a variety of reasons: to find work, begin studies, follow a sweetheart …  These are big changes in a person’s life and he weighs up the pros and cons before committing himself.  I’ve emigrated twice and left friends/family behind but I’ve never said: ‘thank goodness there’s the telephone so that I can ring home now and again.  It doesn’t matter, then, that I’ll live/work too far away to see them.’  This factor comes at the bottom of a person’s list of arguments.
3. Is the telephone solely responsible for creating these psychological networks?  Certainly today there are numerous other factors that play a role in creating these networks, for example, e-mail, social network sites.
4. The survey authors formulated the questions to be put to Manhattan subscribers specifically to address the assumptions they had.  If, for instance, we believe the telephone reduces loneliness then we should expect to see subscribers complaining about isolation and uneasiness during their three-week bout of unconnectedness.  I would have liked to see the questions for myself.  From the article, it seems that people were not given the chance to express themselves in their own words, rather they had to agree/disagree with set statements – putting words in their mouths.  This is much like the tricks of pollsters during electioneering who ask questions such as: Which politician do you think would make the best prime minister, Mr A or Mr B?  They never give you the option of answering: both are crap.
5. Finally, it’s the matter of having assumptions.  I think it’s dangerous to assume anything in the first place.  Collect data, sort, analyse, conclude.

Some other details emerged that made an impression on me, although I don’t know yet whether these are significant details or not.

About 25% of all New York telephones then were ex-directory.  I would be interested to learn if this percentage has changed at all over the decades and if there is any difference by country.  Having an unlisted number, I believe, changes the nature of your telephone network.  You are no longer freely available to every Tom, Dick and Harry who has access to a telephone directory.  Instead, when the telephone rings, you know it can only be someone to whom you have given your number, i.e. someone known to you personally.  Otherwise, it could be a wrong number.  This changes your telephone into something akin to a private, internal network.

Then there’s the question of actual numbers of subscribers surveyed.  Researchers were given the telephone numbers of 600 people they could contact, randomly selected.  Of those 600, 319 were eligible to participate (the others were, for example, business premises).  From the 319, only 190 actually completed the survey – some people refused, some people were never at home when researchers rang.  190 people out of c.1,500,000 Manhattan residents[2] doesn’t seem very many (0.0126% of the Manhattan population to be precise) and if we place the 190 guinea pigs in the context of New York city’s population, then the proportion disappears into infinity.

I believe a similar survey conducted with respondents from a variety of geographical regions – urban, suburban, rural – would yield different results. It would also be good to compare the US with Britain/Europe.  Utopian, I know, but one can dream.

All these people lost their telephone connection due to a company accident.  They were forced to manage without a telephone.  Would they have given different answers if they had never lost their connection, that it to say, just answering questions generally about how they use their telephones?

Residents really didn’t have many options during their three weeks of abstention.  Remember what it was like in 1975?  These people had to resort to the emergency street telephones made available to them or use the telephone at work.  Ten per cent of respondents actually sat down and wrote letters.  In essence, unless they had access to a telephone elsewhere, there was no other substitute for immediate interaction. 

The authors believe that if additional research is conducted what will emerge from respondents is a sense of frustration at not being able to make calls.  Reading between the lines, I interpret this to mean: I want the service to be always available, whether I need it or not.

In conclusion – I’m not disputing the validity of these findings, rather the absolute nature of the authors’ assertions – ‘the telephone reduces loneliness,’ ‘it disperses families.’  It may be a fault in how the writers word their theories but to me it comes across as absolute, categorical and allowing of no other alternatives.

---

[1] Alan H. Wurtzel, and Colin Turner, “What Missing the Telephone Means,” Journal of Communication 27 (2) June 1977: 48-57.

[2] According to Wikipedia.

The communication practices of the Victorians ... spiced up with a scandalous divorce

I have trawled through a handful of etiquette manuals, looking for advice to readers on telephone use.  All in vain.  The British publications pointedly avoid any mention of the new invention, even those published in later years after 1910.  The contents of these manuals are oh so predictable – visiting, invitations to balls/dinners/teas, weddings, funerals.  It seems these were the core events in one’s social calendar and members of the monied classes had to be able to negotiate their way through this minefield.  These were fixed, long established rituals which people observed in order to maintain the traditions of their class.  (Whether these were ‘invented traditions’ à la Hobsbawm is a subject for another thesis.) 

Why should lords and ladies incorporate the upstart telephone into their routines and upset tradition?  The people who read conduct manuals were probably the ones in a position to own a telephone, but that doesn’t mean they would use the instrument to conduct their social affairs.  It might be useful for ringing up one’s business premises or for ordering coal, but such an instrument, ‘tainted’ as it were by business matters, was inappropriate for inviting guests to dinner.  I think remnants of this attitude are still visible today.  There are some aspects of social business that you just don’t conduct over the telephone: wedding invitations, for example, or ‘Dear John’ letters.  I’ve never heard of a ‘Dear John’ telephone call or of someone being notified of a forthcoming wedding by telephone.  Well, they might, but they always send a fancy card by post later.

Lady Colin’s manual is no different to all the others of the era.  It makes no mention whatsoever of the telephone.  It is as if it didn’t exist.  She readily acknowledges, however, that modern life is hectic and that there is little time to devote to letter writing.  How much time she would save if she used the telephone. 

Regarding domestic use, telephone companies said it was alright to ring up traders to order supplies for the household.  Not so Lady Colin.  She advises writing a short letter, and even provides an example: “Mrs. Maitland will be obliged by Mr. Scott sending her 6lb. of tea.”  Admittedly, this method is not as speedy as a phone call, but if you can send a boy round to the shop with the note, you would still get same-day service.  And you would avoid the unpleasant necessity of having to actually converse with tradespeople.  Good houses had separate tradesmen entrances for deliveries, out of sight at the back of the building.  So we don’t want to invite tradesmen directly into our parlours via the telephone.

The writer makes further mention of post cards.  Towards the end of the century sending postcards became a popular form of communication among ordinary people.  Postage for a card was cheaper than a letter and with multiple deliveries in many large towns, it was possible sometimes to send a card and receive a reply on the same day.  You could say that post cards were to Victorians what Twitter is to us today.  Space was limited (you couldn’t add an extra sheet, as with letters) so messages had to be concise.  Lady Colin, however, advises against them for personal matters: post cards are only to be used for business transactions. 

Privacy was a major concern for these people.  Post cards entering and leaving a house would be seen by servants and the information written on them freely visible to all and sundry.  Even more paranoid, to my mind, is Lady C advising letter writers not to write their return address on the backs of envelopes.  Why?  Because servants at the receiving end would know who was writing to their employers.  Compare this with today’s business correspondence: every bill or official letter I receive is blazoned with the sender’s full details. 

I written a lot about communication and correspondence but very little about the telephone.  That’s okay because we are gradually building a picture of how people at the turn of the century communicated with each other and what attitudes they held towards each method.  Given what we now know about, say, letter writing or postal services, it’s easy to envisage how difficult it was for promoters of the telephone to convince the public of its utility. 

I suspect that the telephone eventually caught on, not so much because people realized it was a good communications device, but rather because the other means of communication deteriorated. 

A final comment about the author – Lady Colin was a victim of the hypocrisy and double standards of the day.  Wikipedia has all the sordid details and there’s also information here written by Lady Colin’s biographer.

Her divorce proceedings caused great agitation in high society and the same society ostracized her for her transgression.  Instead of quietly retiring into obscurity, Lady C took to writing and journalism and mixed in literary and artistic circles.  How fitting then that she should edit a book dictating good manners to the people who vilified her.  

Lady Colin Campbell.  Etiquette of Good Society.  London: Cassell and Company, 1893.

"Selling Talk"

I came across another little gem in the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company publication, "Telephone Facts" of 1915.  Remember, this is a journal the company sent out to its business customers (telephone companies) who were in the market for telephones, switchboards, and sundry accessories.

Strategically positioned on the first inside page is a short sales pitch that salesmen can use to market the telephone to potential subscribers.  What is interesting is that the piece does not focus at all on the technical aspects of the telephone apparatus, its durability, technological features, innovation and such like.  Instead, the only selling point the salesman should emphasise is talk.  This is the commodity that the telephone man deals in.  Even more surprising (to me, at least) is the fact that the writer mentions that it doesn't matter if the talk is important or trivial, it is still significant.

Ads such as these link to Claude Fischer's discussion about how American telephone companies suddenly discovered sociability and how, surprise surprise, encouraging people to be sociable was good for business.  We then see a gradual turnaround in telephone companies' attitudes: they ceased promoting the telephone purely for 'serious' business use and stopped berating women who insisted on abusing the telephone for mere trivia.  Now gossip was good.

Everyone involved in the telephone business, from lineman, contract man to operator, was reminded: "you sell talk."

This is all well and good and highly interesting, but what happened in Britain?  It is well known that the telephone service in Britain was grossly under-developed (and dare I even say, backward?) in comparison.  Certainly, in 1915 there was no massive, national advertising campaign undertaken by the General Post Office.  War concerns were more pressing, but even after the war, it would be a long time before any concerted efforts were made to promote the service.  


How the GPO promoted the telephone service is one huge area still awaiting intensive research.  I can't wait to get started!!

 

“Fass dich kurz!”

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the price we pay for each telephone call we make determines the quality of the call and its contents.  And by ‘quality’ I don’t mean whether the connection is successful or if the line is scratchy.

Let me elaborate by drawing a comparison.

Then

In the old days, when domestic telephones used to be situated in hallways and before multiplexing made its appearance, telephone users were more cautious about making a call.  If they did eventually decide that, yes, the call was necessary, they made sure they got off the line as quickly as possible.  By today’s standards, the cost of making phone calls then was much more expensive.  With charges determined by call duration and geographical destination, short local calls were cheaper.  And if you had a lot to say to someone who lived on another continent, then write a letter.

In my first job I worked in an office where every telephone was plastered with stickers reminding people to ring after 1.00 p.m. when off-peak calls were cheaper.  You were only justified in making morning calls in life-or-death situations.  Mornings were always blissfully quiet, but the afternoons erupted as all the telephones went crazy and rang non-stop.  Try telling your office workers today not to make calls during morning hours.

My supervisor remembers making telephone calls as a teenager (again in her home’s hallway) and having her father shout at her to be brief.  Anecdotal evidence shows that this is by no means an unusual experience in the early twentieth century.  In those days, time really was money.

Now that I think about it, making phone calls in the earlier decades must have been very much like using Twitter: you had to be short and succinct to get your message across in as few words as possible.  No waffling on for hours on end.

Now

Most people choose to pay a flat rate for their telephone connection, mobile or landline.  Quite often they get the whole package – telephone, internet, television. 

When you’re talking on the telephone, your mind is free of the torment of the ticking clock.  You can talk for two minutes or two hours, the price is the same. 

You no longer have to think twice about whether the call is really essential or not.  You can ring someone up to be purely sociable, to catch up on gossip, or just because you’ve got absolutely nothing better to do and want to ease the boredom of a long train journey (and have no reading material to hand).  Those bores that use their mobiles to drone on in public places about their inane existence are well known examples.

The comparison

Now I come to my point about call quality.  If the cost of the telephone call is cheap, you don’t give a second thought to lifting up the receiver.  It doesn’t seem such a waste then to use the telephone for trivial reasons.  With timed, expensive calls, on the other hand, you really question the necessity of making that call.  Anyone who has ever had to make an important call from a public phone box with just one 10p coin will understand the implications.

Perhaps there is an element of technological determinism here.  The nature of our telephone network (and its pricing structure) shapes not only our communications practices but also our attitudes towards that network.

I’ll finish off with a salutary lesson for ardent telephone users.  Last month Amtrak officials threw a woman off a night train after passengers complained that she had been speaking loudly on her phone, for 15 hours.  I’m left wondering – what on earth did this woman find to talk about for 15 hours?

Marketing ICTs - the hard sell

A lady came knocking on my door this afternoon.  She was a sales representative for Deutsche Telekom and was bravely trying to recover customers that had gone for rival companies (Alice, Vodafone, O2 and suchlike).  She politely enquired how much my monthly phone bill was and when I told her, she had to admit that, yes, I did have a point in defecting from the mighty DT.

In reality, I rarely use my landline phone to make calls.  It's infinitely cheaper for family members to communicate with mobiles (and cards, not contracts); even more so when we all belong to the same company.  As for long distance and overseas calls, there is, thankfully, Skype.  Who in his right mind would use a landline today to telephone abroad?  Not surprisingly, international Skype calls were three times as many as landline calls in 2010.  Besides that, there are so many mobile companies offering landline connections with internet, mobile telephony, television, etc. that it really is a buyer's market and it pays to shop around.  Virtually everyone nowadays has a telephone of one sort or another, which means the companies are chasing after smaller and smaller pieces of a diminishing pie.  So the nice lady from Telekom with her heavy bag of leaflets and tariffs was sadly wasting her time with me.


This set me thinking about how companies at the turn of the century went about attracting new customers.  They didn't have the benefit of huge billboards, television or radio commercials to spread the word to a wide audience.  I'm not sure how early the first ads would have been placed in newspapers, journals and magazines - some of the people who read and could afford these publications may have been able to afford a telephone connection too.  But would they have found a need for a connection that justified the cost?

Companies that offered telephone services in the first decades weren't really sure what people could actually do with a telephone.  The obvious answer (one-to-one communication or 'mere' chatting) wasn't as obvious to the late Victorians as it is to us.  Hence, we are amused by the quaint reports of concerts broadcast over the telephone, or church services, or distribution of news and information.  I think the mistake here is that they conceived of the telephone network as something for public, i.e. mass, benefit rather than a private medium.  What happened to make them realise they were going in the wrong direction?  What made people think the telephone was a suitable medium for public entertainment and dissemination of news?  How did the telephone companies, and later the General Post Office, come to 'discover sociability' (in the words of Claude Fischer)?  


It will be interesting to find out how the GPO sold new connections and if, indeed, they had a tangible marketing campaign to attract new subscribers.

• which type of customer did they have in mind (gender, social class, occupation, type of residence, location)?
• which reasons would they cite to a potential customer for needing a telephone?
• what benefits could the GPO, as a company, offer the customer?
• how did the GPO position itself against its competitors (telegraph, post, messengers)?

I predict a prodigious amount of research ahead of me!

The Condition of England

C. F. G. Masterman held a somewhat pessimistic view of how mankind was using new technologies.  He was not alone in observing a marked "speeding up" of life, but he also commented that a wasteful lifestyle was becoming fashionable.  The raised standard of living, however, did not mean more comfort but rather more ostentation.  In this way, it was difficult for those on low incomes to keep up with a lifestyle that was slowly becoming the norm.

"But life will be no happier and no richer for such an acceptance; it will merely have become more impossible for those who […] are unequal to the demands of such a standard.  And the same is true of the multiplication of meals; of the rise in the price of rent in certain districts in London, for example, because every one wants to live there; of numberless exactions and extortions which have grown up in a society whose members are ‘like wealthy men who care not how they give’."

Masterman denigrates the new car owners for "driving abroad in furious guise," breaking the speed limit, and destroying English rural tranquility.  He attributes their behaviour to the motorists' need to alleviate boredom.  The competition in consumption won't stop until everyone (that can afford it) has a car, house, abundant food, clothes, flowers, etc. etc.  In this respect, he likens the race to consume with the armaments race.  He concludes, of course, that such an obsession with material possessions does not bring happiness, nor does it make for a better economy.  (Hasn't Masterman read 'The Fable of the Bees'?)

One only needs to glimpse at Masterman's background (social-family connections, political involvement, wartime activities, and so on) to understand why he wrote what he did.  By way of example, he moved into a working-class London tenement to learn first hand what conditions were like.  After such an 'experiment,' no wonder he freely censures middle class profligacy.

This is why I believe Masterman is not merely objecting to technology on the grounds of being opposed to 'progress' and all things new.  His objections to this rampant consumerism and affinity for materialism are based on moral considerations.

C. F. G. Masterman, The Condition of England. 1909

Abuse of the telephone, or cold calling

A reader of the Saturday Review wrote a letter to the editor in November 1937 complaining about the underhand techniques of pushy sales reps.  "Pater Filiarum" had earlier published an announcement of his daughter's engagement.  Weeks later he was bombarded with telephone calls from florists, photographers, hotels, and other businesses involved in the matrimonial 'industry', all fishing for business.  I myself have fallen prey to similar tactics.  So what's new?

He denigrates the callers for wasting his valuable time and disturbing his domestic peace.  He considers various solutions: 

• disconnect the telephone: "not practical";
• go ex-directory: "gives a lot of trouble to one's friends"

He hits on a novel solution in the end:

"What we do is to inform the interrupter that we have black list of all firms who employ this method of convassing, and that we do no business with firms on the black list."

Effective, don't you think?

The following week's edition prints a reply from "Sufferer" who conveniently commiserates with Pater Filiarum.  In his view, the culprit is the telephone book which lists both addresses and telephone numbers (!) making the job of the cold caller a lot easier.  Another bane of modern life is the efficient mail system which delivers "the never-ceasing flood of circulars [...] through the letter-box."  "Sufferer" has even heard of companies ringing up families when there's been a bereavement.

What doesn't fit
Both the writer and respondent remain anonymous.  Other letter writers on the same page supply name and address.  What did Pater and Sufferer have to fear?  Retribution from more cold callers? 


Is this letter something like a 'puff' - ostensibly a reader's letter but really a fix?  If so, what is the magazine trying to sell, what message is it trying to convey?  Perhaps an indirect way of advising affected readers on how to deal with unwanted callers?


Having said this, whether the letter is genuine or written by a journalist, its existence shows a concern for domestic privacy, aggressive (for the period) marketing techniques, and the utility of the telephone.


Why not write to the telephone company, complaining about the companies' misuse of technology?  Or publish (and be damned) this black list of offending companies?


1937 strikes me as a bit late to be complaining about sharp business practices.  By now I would have thought people would be used to them, even if the telephone is still not so widely diffused.


Saturday Review was a magazine with a long history but folded a year after these letters were published.  It had a controversial past (expressed anti-German sentiments), hosted distinguished contributors, had a colourful aristocratic owner (Lady Houston, who died one year before these letters appeared).  Do these elements colour one's interpretation of Pater/Sufferer's letters?


"Abuse of the Telephone."  Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art.  November 1937.

Freud and technology - but without psychoanalysis

Freud considers the progress made in science and technology.  Although people should be proud of their achievements, this progress has not made people feel happier.  Human happiness depends on more than just man’s domination of nature and technological progress.  Having said this, there is some pleasure to be derived 

“if I can […] hear the voice of a child of mine who is living hundreds of miles away or if I can learn in the shortest possible time after a friend has reached his destination that he has come through the long and difficult voyage unharmed.”   

Add to this the more significant advances in medicine that save lives.

Freud counters this, however, with a pessimistic reply.   

“If there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would never have left his native town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice; if traveling across the ocean by ship had not been introduced, my friend would not have embarked on his sea-voyage and I should not need a cable to relieve my anxiety about him.”   

And medicine saves lives only for people to endure miserable lives.  A bleak outlook.

Without wishing to be a wet blanket, these sentiments could well apply to today’s generation (or any generation, come to think of it).  Does possessing the latest iPhone or laptop count for happiness today?  Freud’s examples strike me as a case of ‘using technology to solve a technological problem.’  Technology takes my child away and I’ll use technology to overcome that obstacle.

Sigmund Freud.  Civilization and its Discontents.  New York: Norton, 1961. Original, Vienna, 1930.

How to untie a telephone tangle

A. H. Hastie(1) wrote in 1898 of the problems that beset the British telephone system.  He admonishes not only subscribers but also government and the General Post Office.

Subscribers themselves are to blame for shoddy service.  When they experience delays in connections, they should report this to the telephone company immediately, in writing.  Hastie considers this a subscriber's "duty" and if he performs his duty, then he can enjoy connections within London within fifty seconds (!)  Otherwise, his requested connection may need up to ten minutes.  Unreported delays remain a secret between operator and subscriber.   In modern parlance, I think we call this 'snitching': put your complaint in writing and then the company will tell the operator - make sure Mr X gets good service, or else.  To give him his due, Hastie does concede that "the telephone girls are only human; their work is most worrying work, and every allowance must be made for them.  He then ruins it be suggesting operators fob off subscribers, saying the called party is engaged, when in reality they are not.



It seems that the upper social ranks felt a little put out about having to answer their own telephones and complaints - satirical and serious - about the interruptions abound.  One such example is detailed in a previous post: a logical solution to this problem would be to get the servants to answer calls.  Anyone who could afford a telephone subscription could certainly afford at least one servant.  So, there are two alternatives here: either subscribers wanted their cake and to eat it (maintain a telephone for business contacts, not be disturbed by calls, not allow anyone else to answer calls); or, reports of putative disturbances are greatly exaggerated - by the press or subscribers, who knows?
 
A second area where subscribers can improve communications is by having two lines into their premises.  One line connects to an internal house exchange - employees can communicate in-house and make external calls.  A second line ensures that clients can ring up without being told the line is busy.  Hastie suggests this arrangement is adopted by private households - a servant should answer the phone and there should be connections in the remaining rooms.  In 1898, I can well imagine the cost would be prohibitive for all but the extremely well off.  Two lines meant having two separate subscriptions.


What about the government's part?  Hastie advocates a monopoly.  One organisation in total control is the only way to achieve good service.  (At the time, private companies provided local, town service and the Post Office the trunk, i.e. long distance, service).  If a town just wanted a telephone service operating within its boundaries, then every town council could set up its own urban service with its own specifications.  The problem arises when towns want to communicate long distance and then there is the matter of compatibility.  This is as much a technical matter as it is economic.

Hastie accuses the Post Office of operating a deficient trunk system.  Subscribers placing a long distance call had to wait up to twenty minutes.  (Why do they find this length of time unacceptable?  Yes, it's longer than making a local call, but when you consider the alternatives available a decade or so earlier in the pre-telephone age, twenty minutes to wait seems fine to me.)  Hastie suggests two trunk lines: the first, expensive and quick, and the second one, cheap and slow.  He stresses that "the business community require an efficient telephone service at once" - no mention here of domestic subscribers.

Interestingly, Hastie urges the Post Office to nationalise the telephones and provide the whole country with telephones (in emulation of the US, where growth was phenomenal in comparison).  His rationale is that the creation of the necessary infrastructure would provide jobs for twenty-seven different skilled trades and countless labourers.  Hastie is silent on how the Post Office responded.




(1) Founder of the Telephone Subscribers' Protection Association

A. H. Hastie.  "The telephone tangle, and the way to untie it."  Fortnightly Review.  December 1898.

Thomas Brennan - his life as a messenger boy, 1910

My previous post talked about the sarcastic instructions for telephone subscribers written in a Judy article of 1898.  In the 1890s the network was sparse and few people had a telephone at home, even among those that could afford one. 

By the eve of the First World War, this situation had not changed that much.  Other technologies (electric lighting, motor cars, cinema, etc.) were prevalent but I get the impression that for many, the telephone was still a bit of a novelty.

Thomas Patrick Brennan was born in 1896 in Liverpool, two years before the Judy article.  He spent his entire working life employed by the Post Office.  His very first job (at the tender age of 14) was as a telegraph messenger boy.  He had six hundred other boys as colleagues working in Liverpool then and he remembers that they were all exceptionally busy because "the telephone wasn't as efficient as it is today."  He recalls that the telegraph was used extensively by the business people in the town. 

Thomas's life as a messenger boy was more akin to that of a soldier's than working for the civil service.  One hour every morning was devoted to drill exercises, marching, presenting arms, target practice and saluting.  The boys had to salute senior officials of the Post Office whenever they saw them, so I can understand the logic of practising this.  And the drills and marching would help keep them fit.  I'm not sure, though, where the rifle practice comes in!

To complete the military lifestyle, the boys had to make sure their uniforms were spotless and that hair and fingernails were clean.  Boots and buttons were to be polished and shiny.  Since boys had a unique number on the collar of their jacket, identifying a culprit with muddy shoes was not a problem.  Any boy that didn't pass muster during the daily inspection was sent home to get clean.  I recall the discipline problems the telephone companies had with telegraph messenger boys working as the first switchboard operators.  Did the Post Office have this in mind?  Perhaps this explains the rigid routines imposed on these young boys: the Post Office didn't want the boys getting out of hand and they were, after all, delivering important telegrams at times.

In 1913 Thomas was sent to work in the engineering branch and it was here that he had his first experience with the telephone.  Naturally, he needed to know how the telephone worked and, more importantly, how to use it.  He was completely in the dark about these things.  An engineer in the office asked him, "Have you ever used the telephone, sonny?"  When Thomas replied in the negative, he was told, "Well, you'd better get onto it."  He then had to crank the handle on the side of the telephone and ring the Edgworth station (which was always engaged) and other places that he knew.  And what did he say when someone answered the telephone at the other end?  "Just ask a silly question just to get into the idea of answering the telephone."  This was one of his new duties!

Thomas wouldn't be alive today, so we can't go and ask him more pointed questions about his early working life.  This is just a tiny extract from his life story which has been recorded by historians (the written transcript runs to eighty-eight pages).  It is precisely this wealth of detail that adds social colour to the dry and sterile (to me) history emanating from company accounts and parliamentary reports.

Citation: see earlier post from November 2010 for details of the oral history project in which Mr Brennan participated.

"Telephonic instructions and notes," 1898

When she started her shift every morning, the switchboard operator of the early years had to telephone each of her subscribers.  This wasn't to wish him a good morning but to check if the line was still connected and working.  Faults were frequent and lines invariably became disconnected and the only way to test the line was by telephoning the subscriber.  Can you imagine such a thing happening today, and without caller-ID?  I mean the ringing up, not the disconnected lines.

The fact that this custom became the object of satire in contemporary publications, illustrates the strength of feeling against it and its prevalence.  Newspaper cartoons of the day also ridiculed the inefficiencies of the telephone service.  One of the "instructions" provided "not by the National Telephone Company, Limited" (in Judy) advises on Temper:

"Don't be put out if you are in medias rep [sic] with an intricate calculation, and have to descend sundry flights of stairs only to find that the telephone nymph wishes to know if you can hear her all right this morning."

Wouldn't it be more sensible to have the telephone situated in a study or sitting room, instead of the cold and distant hall?
Why not get one of the servants to answer the telephone, especially when it was predictable who was ringing?


Not only does the writer poke fun at the customs and practices involved in using the telephone apparatus ("turn the handle x times as if you were operating upon a barrel-organ") but he makes puns out of the new vocabulary used for telephone terminology: "If the (Official) Receiver is off to the Hook (of Holland), you naturally cannot ring him up."
Such vocabulary (receiver, hook, engaged, exchange, instrument) has now acquired new layers of meaning.  These double meanings are exploited for entertainment value, but also as a stinging critique of the infant telephone service.  The public were presented with a new technology for which they struggled to find a real need and a niche.  The public not only had to find a way to assimilate the telephone into their daily routines, and develop a telephone discourse with which to discuss these new practices, but they also had to deal with telephone companies beset by technical problems and inexperience.  Remember, the companies and their staff were new at this business too.

"Telephonic instructions and notes."  Judy, or the London serio-comic Journal.  9 March 1898.

Telephone screens

One further aspect that I wish to address in this thesis is that of the telephone (as artefact) in its domestic setting.  In which rooms of the house was it kept, where was it stored (on a writing desk, sideboard, its own table, etc.), how did it fit in with the rest of the decor - such questions as these can reveal much about social attitudes.  As a 'piece of furniture' or as a piece of technology,

Castells - Toward a Sociology of the Network Society

Castells analyses the social changes that have occurred which have led to the emergence of a 'new society.'

1. New technological paradigm  New ITs allow for new forms of social organisation and interaction.  Such organisation and interaction occurs via electronic information networks.
2. Globalisation  [With hindsight we recognise early evidence of globalisation in past eras, but without electronically-based communication networks, it could never reach today's total coverage.  I'm hard pressed to think of one corner of the world that has not yet been overrun by mankind or that has not been touched by Western "civilisation."  Here I think of the rubbish accumulated around the base camp of Mount Everest.]
3. Internet  [I don't think any comment is necessary, suffice to say that, contrary to the first pundits, the Internet does not unify people in democratic harmony.  Whoever goes on line, immediately seeks out like-minded individuals/organisations.  He will not view sites that put out an ideology which he is hostile to.  Few people will attempt to find out why their opponents think the way they do; instead they will turn to sites that echo their own worldview.
4. Death of the sovereign nation-state   Alliances struck between countries affect internal power structures.  Think, for example, of countries belonging to the EU.  [National boundaries are being redrawn and/or becoming more transparent, and few countries can act in isolation without due consideration to their 'partners'.]
5. "Crisis of patriarchy"  Family forms have changed; the 'heterosexual-couple-with-2-kids model no longer holds sway.  Other family models have emerged which have become feasible alternatives.
6. Scientific progress   Among other things, there is a new awareness of man's relationship with the environment, which has brought about changes in production, consumption, etc.

This article also neatly summarises Castell's work on networks, spatial structure, and space of flows, and makes a useful accompaniment to his book, Rise of the Network Society.


How will the above prove useful to my thesis?  Well, for a start I think we can see incipient forms of many of the above dimensions in turn of the century Britain.  Regarding the Internet, obviously this did not exist in 1900 but if we adopt Standage's views on the telegraph (coupled with a highly efficient postal system), then we can say that society at that time had access to a system of express information exchange.

Questions

What is the role of the telephone network in creating this "new society?"  E.g. was it instrumental in bringing about any social change (as per the above dimensions)?

Did it promote or hinder?

Manual Castells.  "Toward a Sociology of the Network Society."  Contemporary Sociology Vol 29, No 5 (Sept. 2000), 693-699.

Social domains and their interaction with technology

Any social history of the telephone, must examine it in conjunction with the following areas:
Uses
Which groups use it; how is the telephone integrated into their lives; what adjustments do they have to make to accommodate it?
Work
Do working practices change?  Are existing hierarchies within a business changed/reinforced/subverted?  This has to do with power relations - what happens to those power relations when a new technology is introduced?
Culture
Perhaps it is too deterministic to ask 'how technology affects culture' (and too simplistic and naive), because culture is too vast and complicated to be affected by just one concept.  Perhaps it would be more productive follow the traces technology leaves in its wake when the two spheres (culture and technology) overlap.  How pervasive is technology in our beliefs, our metaphors, our hopes for the future, our nightmares, our art?  As a medium, do we still talk about it, or has it become transparent (invisible) through overuse?
Class, gender
Once more, beware of transferring definitions between eras.  But having said this, has technology reinforced or subverted existing structures?  Did it force to re-evaluate our preconceptions of these terms?

Technology/telephone and ...

..politics
Always a controversial area.  Obviously government intervention (or, interference?) held back developments in telephony, so as not to harm their investment in the telegraph.  Despite this, the former overtook the latter.  When was the turning point?  Surely, other factors also impinged on the telephone's development, such as people travelling more, migration to urban areas, increase in commerce?  Why was the Post Office so negative about the telephone?  Was the system so perfect (with errand boys, telegrams, and twelve postal deliveries daily) that a telephone was superfluous?  Did they really need to invent a need for it?

..class/gender
Another controversial area.  These categories are not immutable and fixed in concrete.  They change over time so we mustn't look at, say, gender roles in the Fin de Siècle and assume these are the same gender roles that we know in the year 2010.  What could be examined is how telecommunications technologies mediated class/gender relations of the time and whether use* of these technologies reinforced/weakened those relations.  For example, how did domestic practices change when a telephone appeared in the hallway?  Who answered it?  What was the involvement of servants?  A gentleman would never think of paying a "morning visit" to a single young woman (and certainly without her mother/chaperone being present).  But what was society's reaction later when he could telephone her from the comfort of his own home?


..culture
How is the telephone represented in visual art, dramas, novels?  How soon after its invention did the telephone start to appear in cultural artefacts?  How soon is it before we can talk about the existence of a "telephone culture"?


..work
The telephone in business and the workplace.  Again, slighted related to class/gender in the sense of workplace relationships in connection with the telephone [boss/employee].  Particularly interesting is the introduction of the telephone in the City.  An ultra conservative domain of the male, upper classes, the City did not welcome the telephone with open arms.  Their business dealings were based on personal contacts, networks, gentlemen's agreements and word of mouth (see Kynaston's magisterial The City of London).  That's how it had always been done and they saw no reason to change in a hurry.
Developments also occurred in general office work (more office automation - typewriters, construction of large office blocks in city centres, office work becoming more suitable for women - feminisation of office work).  Telecommunications in industry/commerce, however, is too big a topic; it deserves a dissertation all of its own.




* Here I nearly fell into the trap of saying "whether these technologies reinforced ..." as if they had free agency.  The discussion should revolve around "technologies-in-use" and what people do with them.

Lana Rakow, "The Public at the Table"

Old and new media 
Old and new questions

Traditional questions

• How do individuals respond to media?
• What do media do to people [tech. determinism]
• What do people do with media?

Weakness-omissions of these questions

• Basic model (on which comm.techs. are built) is left unchallenged
• Basic model remains as:

               "institutions speak - citizens listen" [people lack a voice]

New model of communications

   Citizens should be participants/speakers in a communication process, and not just receivers of messages, i.e. active, not passive.

New questions

• What could people do with media?

OLD MEDIA

Institutions set terms of debate

Model of communication

1. Invention/appearance
2. A few creative uses
3. Debate re. its potential
4. New tech. settles down and becomes a consumer product
5. Govt. and private business use the tech. for their own benefit (financial, political) but 'sell' the tech. to the public, citing 'benefits' of socialisation, democratic participation, access
6. Model of comm. used is one of "one-to-many" (institution to many individuals).  Otherwise, model is "one-to-one" for individuals.

Traditional questions - What do media do to people?

What is overlooked - questions re. ownership, control, purpose of media

For techs. that are now consumer products (i.e. no longer a novelty in its introductory phase), the questions from dominant groups (incl. academics) revolve around:

     media reception, its effects on people

NEW MEDIA

Use a different model of comm., a more democratic one: a model with public participation.

Citizens need the means to communicate with each other and institutions.  Access alone is not enough (where 'access' means buying products and receiving info via these products).

Convergence of techs (e.g. computer and telephone) is a good time to change the terms of the debate.

Lana Rakow.  "The Public at the Table: From Public Access to Public Participation."  New Media Society 1999; 1, 74-82.