Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You

Transcript

Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck
0:14
Speaker 2: ring Ring, there's Jerry and this is Stuff you should Know.
0:18
Speaker 1: That's right. This is a Kyle joint. So there's a
0:22
Speaker 1: little British factor to an ear is Kyle likes to
0:25
Speaker 1: throw those in because that's where he lives.
0:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, he keeps mentioning fish and chips every few paragraphs.
0:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's a chippy. We are going to be talking
0:35
Speaker 1: about telephone switchboards. Some overlap with a couple of other
0:39
Speaker 1: episodes we've done, but this is all about the you know,
0:43
Speaker 1: the the advancement of the telephone system and the United
0:46
Speaker 1: States and abroad, and how the telephone switchboard was a crucial,
0:49
Speaker 1: crucial part of that.
0:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. First, I want to give a shout out. If
0:54
Speaker 2: you ever find yourself in the town of Maitland, Florida,
0:57
Speaker 2: go to the Maitland I think, well, it's the Telephone Museum.
1:02
Speaker 2: There's probably not more than one telephone museum in Maitland,
1:06
Speaker 2: even though I can't remember the name of it. Just
1:08
Speaker 2: ask somebody for directions there and they will tell you
1:11
Speaker 2: or ask your app regardless. It's really cute. It's not
1:15
Speaker 2: the biggest museum you'll ever find, but it's a very
1:18
Speaker 2: dedicated museum.
1:19
Speaker 1: I leveled telephones. I would like to check that out.
1:22
Speaker 2: Oh you'd love this. There's a bank of wall telephones
1:25
Speaker 2: from the seventies probably, and each one's a different color.
1:30
Speaker 2: It's very pretty. Oh my god, Yeah, you would like
1:33
Speaker 2: this place. Check it. It reminded me that something that
1:38
Speaker 2: was just such an integral part of our life is
1:40
Speaker 2: a completely obsolete, outdated antique technology. There's basically no reason
1:48
Speaker 2: for it to exist any longer, and it may not
1:50
Speaker 2: as far as I know. Yeah, I think you still
1:54
Speaker 2: have to have it to connect some home alarm systems maybe,
1:59
Speaker 2: but that's the only application I know of anymore.
2:02
Speaker 1: Actually, you know what, that's We had that for that
2:05
Speaker 1: landline for that reason for a while, but no longer.
2:09
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't. I just don't think that there's
2:11
Speaker 2: any reason for you to exist any Look, I'm sure
2:13
Speaker 2: I'm wrong, but that's the best I can come up
2:15
Speaker 2: with this home alarm systems.
2:17
Speaker 1: I guess nostalgia's not a good enough reason.
2:19
Speaker 2: Huh keeps this amazing network of technology still around?
2:25
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, man, I mean lots of it's dumb. It's
2:29
Speaker 1: just my my urgen x selves like looking back with
2:33
Speaker 1: joy about walking around your bedroom with a long phone
2:36
Speaker 1: cord and yeah, or your mom literally being able to
2:39
Speaker 1: go to every point in the kitchen with like a
2:42
Speaker 1: twenty five foot stretchy phone cord that you're ducking under
2:45
Speaker 1: and it's knocking things over.
2:46
Speaker 2: And that's right, there goes the flower.
2:49
Speaker 1: Wireless is better.
2:50
Speaker 2: I know it's I don't think it's just nostalgia. I
2:54
Speaker 2: think there is some real value or there's it's not
3:00
Speaker 2: pointless to look at the telephone system that was created
3:04
Speaker 2: over the decades in the twentieth century and just be impressed,
3:08
Speaker 2: like it wasn't a marvelous technology and it did some
3:12
Speaker 2: amazing stuff while it was around. It's just we've moved
3:15
Speaker 2: on technology wise. But that doesn't mean you can't appreciate it.
3:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder if they're they're safer like for like
3:23
Speaker 1: government systems, you know, because you literally have to tap
3:26
Speaker 1: the wire physically. It's not just in the airwaves, true dat.
3:32
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
3:33
Speaker 2: I don't know either, but that's a great point.
3:37
Speaker 1: I'm curious. Surely someone knows. But let's talk about Alexander
3:40
Speaker 1: Graham Bell, because he is the og. He's the guy
3:43
Speaker 1: that invented, well patented the telephone at least, right, and
3:47
Speaker 1: from Boston in eighteen seventy six, where he was not
3:50
Speaker 1: trying to invent a telephone. He was trying to work
3:53
Speaker 1: out the problem with the electrical telegraph, which was it
3:57
Speaker 1: was just getting bunched up. Too many people are sending
3:59
Speaker 1: too many you know, telegraphs, and it's a problem. So
4:05
Speaker 1: there's too much traffic. So all of a sudden, Bell,
4:08
Speaker 1: who was a sound guy anyway, realized that you could
4:12
Speaker 1: send tones. And once he realized you could send a
4:15
Speaker 1: tone along a wire, he was like, oh, forget the telegraph,
4:19
Speaker 1: I'm going to come up with the harmonic telegraph and
4:22
Speaker 1: one day I'm going to speak to somebody on the
4:24
Speaker 1: other end of a wire.
4:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, not dots and dashes, but hayes and how are
4:29
Speaker 2: you is or a hoys? Yeah? Right. So he did
4:33
Speaker 2: this in eighteen seventy six, right, He set out to
4:38
Speaker 2: figure out the telegraph clogging and invented the phone pretty quickly.
4:43
Speaker 2: The next year he found a Bell Telephone company, and
4:47
Speaker 2: the first permanent telephone wires were in Boston, I think
4:51
Speaker 2: that same year right, So we had telephone service set
4:54
Speaker 2: up within a year of him inventing the telephone. One
4:58
Speaker 2: of the other things too, is he helped kind of
5:00
Speaker 2: spread telephone technology by giving lectures that people would come
5:04
Speaker 2: see and then go off and like build their own
5:07
Speaker 2: versions that would work. But initially, when you were talking
5:13
Speaker 2: to somebody on a telephone, your telephone was physically connected
5:17
Speaker 2: to their telephone, which made a lot of sense initially,
5:21
Speaker 2: But if you want to talk to more than one
5:23
Speaker 2: friend in town, you need another wire to connect your
5:27
Speaker 2: phone to somebody else's telephone, and so on and so forth.
5:31
Speaker 2: And if you just kind of follow that logical path,
5:34
Speaker 2: you very quickly realize, like, man, we're going to need
5:37
Speaker 2: a lot of wires to connect one person to everybody
5:40
Speaker 2: else and everybody else to that one person. It just
5:44
Speaker 2: that's the definition of exponential growth. And so they figured
5:48
Speaker 2: out they needed a different way rather than connecting each
5:50
Speaker 2: telephone physically, and that's where they came up with the
5:53
Speaker 2: concept of the switchboard.
5:55
Speaker 1: That's right, What if all of the calls went into
5:58
Speaker 1: a central location and it was a human being there
6:01
Speaker 1: that would connect those two wires. It's a very elegant,
6:04
Speaker 1: very simple, sort of system. It's you know, it's literally
6:09
Speaker 1: connecting two calls by you know, by connecting them by
6:13
Speaker 1: plugging them into the same what would you even call
6:17
Speaker 1: that board?
6:18
Speaker 2: Jack?
6:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, the same jack. The first switchboard commercially was in
6:23
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight, so only geez, like a year after
6:29
Speaker 1: the Bell Telephone Company was founded. This is in New Haven, Connecticut,
6:32
Speaker 1: and it connected twenty one different subscribers in this case.
6:36
Speaker 1: And this is a very old fashioned, primitive thing. Before
6:40
Speaker 1: long they were like, why don't we wrap these chords
6:43
Speaker 1: in cloth? It's like insulated, and why don't we make
6:47
Speaker 1: the you know, the board look a little nicer and
6:50
Speaker 1: we'll call them achrdboard. But everyone's still going to call
6:53
Speaker 1: them a switchboard.
6:54
Speaker 2: Yes. One thing really quick too. When some of these
6:57
Speaker 2: first commercial switchboards popped up in town, like the one
7:01
Speaker 2: in New Haven that I guess George Coy was the
7:04
Speaker 2: inventor of, they would publish phone books, and the first
7:08
Speaker 2: phone books would be like one page with like fifty
7:11
Speaker 2: people's names on because when you called, you would call
7:15
Speaker 2: and your call would be connected by an operator. So
7:18
Speaker 2: you'd pick up your phone and the only person that
7:20
Speaker 2: would go to is that operator or switchboard and you
7:22
Speaker 2: would say I want to talk to Chuck Bryant please,
7:25
Speaker 2: and the operator would look up where your jack was
7:30
Speaker 2: that went to your house and then now connected the call.
7:34
Speaker 2: Right So they would plug my phone cord into your
7:39
Speaker 2: phone jack and connect our call. But first they would write. First,
7:43
Speaker 2: they would they would plug in themselves to you and
7:46
Speaker 2: say Josh Clark calling for Charles Bryant, and you would say,
7:50
Speaker 2: tell him, I'm in the shower.
7:51
Speaker 1: They would plug back.
7:53
Speaker 2: Into mine and be like, he's in the shower, he
7:55
Speaker 2: can't talk right now. And I would say tell him
7:58
Speaker 2: that I know he's not in the shower and hang out, fang.
8:00
Speaker 1: Really, you're not too far off.
8:03
Speaker 2: Uh.
8:04
Speaker 1: That is, if my jack is on that board. If
8:07
Speaker 1: it was a big enough community, that switchboard operator might say,
8:11
Speaker 1: I don't have Chuck on this board, but he's on
8:13
Speaker 1: another board, so I'm going to contact that switchboard and
8:17
Speaker 1: you know, patch it in that way.
8:19
Speaker 2: So but first thing, spend ten minutes going down east
8:21
Speaker 2: Jack like Chuck Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck Chuck Chuck.
8:25
Speaker 1: Well, early on they just knew it, you know, in
8:27
Speaker 1: a twenty one person situation, they just knew everybody. In fact,
8:30
Speaker 1: that for a little while. They weren't even saying phone numbers.
8:32
Speaker 1: They were just like Chuck Bryant, right exactly.
8:36
Speaker 2: And one of the other things about a central switchboard too,
8:39
Speaker 2: is there's a phone company employee connecting calls, and so
8:44
Speaker 2: now you can track things more easily and hence bill
8:47
Speaker 2: people more accurately too.
8:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, because this is when making a call costs money,
8:52
Speaker 1: and up until I mean not that long ago, in
8:54
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, making a long distance call
8:57
Speaker 1: costs extra money. So you had to build people, and
9:01
Speaker 1: it was pretty ingenious. Things started growing, growing, growing, you
9:05
Speaker 1: said the word exponentially, and that is the truth, because
9:08
Speaker 1: between eighteen eighty and just thirteen years later we went
9:11
Speaker 1: from sixty thousand phones to two sixty and then just
9:15
Speaker 1: another ten years later there were three million phones in
9:21
Speaker 1: the United States only Kyle points out, and then the
9:25
Speaker 1: UK they were a little bit behind us. Nineteen fourteen
9:28
Speaker 1: there were fewer than two telephones per one hundred people
9:31
Speaker 1: compared to ten in the US, but they eventually caught
9:34
Speaker 1: up to and everyone had phones.
9:37
Speaker 2: That's right. I'm sure there's some listeners like I didn't
9:42
Speaker 2: have a phone when I was a kid. Well maybe
9:45
Speaker 2: so as more and more people had phones, More and
9:48
Speaker 2: more jacks were required in switchboards, so you're getting bigger switchboards,
9:52
Speaker 2: more switchboards. It became kind of a mess in and
9:56
Speaker 2: of itself, as we'll see. That was known as the
9:58
Speaker 2: switchboard problem, right. Yeah, But then finally they figured out, okay,
10:05
Speaker 2: there's a few tweaks we can do here that are
10:08
Speaker 2: going to allow us just to support this growth. Because
10:11
Speaker 2: the phone companies weren't like, well, we're good at ten
10:14
Speaker 2: thousand subscribers, let's just hold here. They wanted everybody to
10:17
Speaker 2: have a phone so they could bill everybody for using
10:19
Speaker 2: those phones. And also America or the United States of
10:22
Speaker 2: the world, I think, was like, we really want to
10:25
Speaker 2: be able to pick up the phone and talk to people.
10:26
Speaker 2: It was a huge, enormous technology that completely changed how
10:32
Speaker 2: humans interact with one another. So everybody wanted a phone.
10:36
Speaker 2: Phone company wanted to give people phones. The big sticking
10:39
Speaker 2: point was how you can connect that many people in
10:42
Speaker 2: an efficient way and not just keep adding switchboard after
10:45
Speaker 2: switchboard after switchboard.
10:47
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know something else we should point out too,
10:49
Speaker 1: is this is a time where the phone company controlled
10:54
Speaker 1: the phones themselves, and so you can just go to
10:56
Speaker 1: a store and buy some cool looking Mickey mouse phone
10:59
Speaker 1: or a Garfield phone or illustrated I had a I
11:05
Speaker 1: did get that for free, actually, but those are always garbage.
11:08
Speaker 1: Those are the ones that look like push button but
11:09
Speaker 1: when you hit it, it dialed.
11:11
Speaker 2: Oh really, do.
11:12
Speaker 1: You remember those who you know it had the keypad,
11:15
Speaker 1: but when you hit nine, it.
11:16
Speaker 2: Went No, I don't remember that.
11:19
Speaker 1: It was a big bait and switch. But you rented
11:23
Speaker 1: your phone at the time, I guess you had a
11:26
Speaker 1: or maybe they didn't sell them at all at first,
11:27
Speaker 1: but I know for a long time they rented phones
11:29
Speaker 1: to people, like into the seventies, right, yeah, I mean
11:32
Speaker 1: like you used to rent your Some people still probably
11:35
Speaker 1: rent their modem from their cable or whatever their Wi
11:38
Speaker 1: Fi provider. Saying all the wrong words.
11:41
Speaker 2: No, I think you got it provider, yeah, or internet
11:45
Speaker 2: is Internet Service provider ISP.
11:47
Speaker 1: That's okay. But yeah, anyway, they were they were controlling
11:51
Speaker 1: the flow of money and more ways than just the bill.
11:54
Speaker 1: They wanted as many people to have phones as possible
11:56
Speaker 1: because they were renting those phones and eventually I guess
11:58
Speaker 1: selling those phones.
11:58
Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember. Umi has a story from when she
12:01
Speaker 2: was a kid of going to the phone store with
12:03
Speaker 2: her dad and renting a princess phone.
12:06
Speaker 1: Like I remember it, it's so weird.
12:09
Speaker 2: It is weird. It's just weird to think of. But
12:12
Speaker 2: like you said, that was a way for them to
12:14
Speaker 2: control revenue even more. And also I think it made
12:17
Speaker 2: it more available to more people, because I think even
12:21
Speaker 2: into the sixties to seventies, phones were still kind of
12:25
Speaker 2: expensive to make, and so they were expensive to buy,
12:29
Speaker 2: so you could lease them. But I think ultimately it
12:32
Speaker 2: was it was really the phone companies, and they were
12:34
Speaker 2: able to get away from this, as we'll see, because
12:37
Speaker 2: for years and years and years there was essentially a
12:39
Speaker 2: monopoly on the phone in the United States.
12:43
Speaker 1: That's right, But I got us a little off track.
12:46
Speaker 1: You were talking about some new techniques because the switchboards,
12:50
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we're getting just more and more ubiquitous,
12:53
Speaker 1: and they started to get a little clunky in like
12:56
Speaker 1: how long it would take to connect calls. So one
12:59
Speaker 1: of the things they did is came up with the
13:01
Speaker 1: concept of what's called the divided exchange, which is really
13:04
Speaker 1: just an organizational structural thing where people got more specialized.
13:08
Speaker 1: You might have operators just answering the phone. You might
13:12
Speaker 1: have people just connecting instead of the person going, oh hey, Josh,
13:15
Speaker 1: let me see if Chuck's available. Like, all of that
13:18
Speaker 1: was really streamlined eventually until they came up what was
13:21
Speaker 1: called the Express system that had a lot of letter
13:25
Speaker 1: B boards that converged on a letter A board and
13:30
Speaker 1: there was an operator linking between those two.
13:34
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so the A person, the person at the
13:36
Speaker 2: A board would be like, oh, yeah, Josh is on
13:39
Speaker 2: B board seventy two, but Chuck is on B board three,
13:43
Speaker 2: So I need I need to be the one that
13:45
Speaker 2: connects B board seventy two in B board three for
13:48
Speaker 2: this call. These are human beings doing this and expected
13:52
Speaker 2: to do it really fast too, as we'll see.
13:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. They also just improved the signals, like signal strength.
13:58
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, operators weren't like yelling at each
14:02
Speaker 1: other and you know which can cause just chaos in
14:04
Speaker 1: a room with a bunch of switchboard operators.
14:06
Speaker 2: What's the number for dominos?
14:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So just improving the signal really optimized how
14:13
Speaker 1: those things function such, you know, even just making the
14:16
Speaker 1: little signal lamps a little lights brighter, right, responding to
14:20
Speaker 1: the current and the line, like everything just got a
14:22
Speaker 1: little better.
14:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the current in the line was a huge
14:24
Speaker 2: thing too. Not only would it light up the little
14:26
Speaker 2: light above your jack showing the operator like, oh, this
14:30
Speaker 2: guy's trying to call right now, but it also allowed
14:34
Speaker 2: for telephones to carry a little bit of a current,
14:37
Speaker 2: which was how the voice was was broadcast anyway. But
14:40
Speaker 2: it was one more thing that they controlled. They powered everything,
14:43
Speaker 2: which made the whole thing more efficient. Rather than having
14:46
Speaker 2: a bunch of batteries out by the lines, there was
14:48
Speaker 2: a central group of batteries and power generation that came
14:52
Speaker 2: from the main office too. So when you put all
14:55
Speaker 2: this stuff together, they got really good at analyzing traffic
14:58
Speaker 2: to to kind of put resources, you know, where it
15:01
Speaker 2: needed at any given time. Put all this together. For
15:04
Speaker 2: the next four or five decades, the phone system just
15:08
Speaker 2: kept expanding and expanding and expanding, but there was always
15:11
Speaker 2: a front tier there was. These were individual cities, individual towns,
15:16
Speaker 2: and if the town or the city was close enough
15:18
Speaker 2: to another town or city, they would probably be able
15:22
Speaker 2: to connect. But for the most part, these phone systems
15:24
Speaker 2: are growing intra well internally, let's just say that I
15:29
Speaker 2: almost got really fancy for a second, but I'm just
15:32
Speaker 2: gonna say they were internal into each town, growing and
15:35
Speaker 2: growing and growing, connecting subscribers. But each town was kind
15:38
Speaker 2: of like its own isolated island of telephony.
15:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so obviously the next thing to conquer would
15:47
Speaker 1: be the LD long distance. At the time, if you
15:52
Speaker 1: wanted to pick up a phone in New York City
15:55
Speaker 1: and call San Francisco, you couldn't do it.
15:58
Speaker 2: No, But I say we take a break, leave this
16:00
Speaker 2: as a cliffhanger, and when we come back, we'll say
16:03
Speaker 2: whether or not they were eventually able to do it. Stuck.
16:10
Speaker 1: You know what, Stucks.
16:12
Speaker 2: It's a great name. That's the name of it. It's
16:17
Speaker 2: a great name, all right, Stuck's net with with an X. Okay.
16:32
Speaker 2: So when they finally did start connecting towns, they would
16:38
Speaker 2: use switchboards, right, so your your your town would be
16:42
Speaker 2: connected to another town by a switchboard. They used trunk lines.
16:45
Speaker 2: These are like these longer, stronger lines that people would
16:48
Speaker 2: use to connect one town to another. And let's say
16:52
Speaker 2: that you were in Topeka and you wanted to talk to.
16:57
Speaker 1: Tacoma, Washington, Okay, two great tee towns.
17:01
Speaker 2: Sure, when you picked up the phone and Topeka and
17:03
Speaker 2: said give me Tacoma, uh, they would this would set
17:07
Speaker 2: off a chain reaction of connections carried out by human
17:11
Speaker 2: operators who would connect to this switchboard and the switchboard
17:15
Speaker 2: connected to I don't know, Kansas City, and then that
17:18
Speaker 2: switchboard connected to Erie pencil Erie, Pennsylvania'd be going the
17:23
Speaker 2: wrong way Munchie in the Indiana Is it Muncie?
17:27
Speaker 1: Yeah?
17:28
Speaker 2: Boy, this is going terribly but I think it really
17:30
Speaker 2: gets it really illustrates how cludgy the whole thing was. Uh.
17:33
Speaker 2: And then it would go from Munsey slash Munchie to Garee, Indiana, Okay,
17:39
Speaker 2: and then to I don't know, onwards and upwards until finally,
17:44
Speaker 2: switchboard after switchboard after switchboard after switchboard, town to town
17:47
Speaker 2: to town, it would finally connect all the way through
17:50
Speaker 2: all these towns from switchboard to switchboard. You to your
17:54
Speaker 2: friend Tacoma, who wasn't even home.
17:59
Speaker 1: That you were using the Miles Davis rebreathing technique.
18:02
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
18:04
Speaker 1: You're breathing through your nose so you don't have to
18:06
Speaker 1: stop talking.
18:06
Speaker 2: I just didn't breathe.
18:08
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that's the dizzy Gillespian message.
18:11
Speaker 2: Speaking of dizzy.
18:13
Speaker 1: Yes, it's amazing. I guess we'll spoil it and say
18:18
Speaker 1: eventually New York was able to talk to San Francisco,
18:22
Speaker 1: and in fact, I think that was well. No, the
18:26
Speaker 1: first long line was between New York and Philly, and
18:28
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five, New York to San Francisco finally came around, finally,
18:32
Speaker 1: I say, in nineteen fifteen, which is incredible.
18:37
Speaker 2: You know, for that call, they brought Alexander Graham Bell
18:40
Speaker 2: out of retirement because he'd left a super big, fat
18:44
Speaker 2: rich man by this time, and had him talk to Watson.
18:48
Speaker 2: Remember the first phone call. I was room to room
18:50
Speaker 2: between him and Watson. He said, Watson came here, I
18:53
Speaker 2: need you. And on this huge, monumental historical phone call
18:58
Speaker 2: from New York to San Francisco, Belle said, Watson, come here,
19:02
Speaker 2: I need you again, and Watson said, I will, but
19:05
Speaker 2: it's going to take me a week to get there.
19:07
Speaker 1: Watson. That's so Watson.
19:09
Speaker 2: It totally is Watson.
19:11
Speaker 1: Classic Watson. You know, it didn't just work with like magic.
19:16
Speaker 1: You can't send something that used to going like a
19:18
Speaker 1: mile or let's say one hundred miles, all of a
19:21
Speaker 1: sudden sending it, you know, close to three thousand miles.
19:24
Speaker 1: So they had boosters, They had loading coils, which are electromagnets,
19:29
Speaker 1: that would boost the transmission. They had these vacuum tubes
19:33
Speaker 1: that would regenerate a weak signal. Those were called repeaters.
19:36
Speaker 1: So it needed help along the way to finally get
19:39
Speaker 1: you know, across country. But the fact that they were
19:42
Speaker 1: able to do that by nineteen fifteen is remarkable. While
19:46
Speaker 1: this is happening, I mean, I think you said that
19:49
Speaker 1: Bell was an old, fat, rich guy by this point.
19:51
Speaker 1: That is because through even the late eighteen hundreds, Bell
19:58
Speaker 1: consistently swatted away Ry with lawsuits, with shutting people down
20:03
Speaker 1: with saying like, no, you know, I have a patent
20:05
Speaker 1: here till eighteen ninety four, So like there are people
20:09
Speaker 1: out there building in their own phones and even their
20:11
Speaker 1: own switchboards, but like I'm going to go after them
20:13
Speaker 1: as fast as they can build them.
20:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had detectives that would go bust down doors
20:17
Speaker 2: and confiscate bogus phones, which were phones that weren't part
20:21
Speaker 2: of the Bell network, which again held the patent. Then
20:24
Speaker 2: even after the patent expired, they would just sue anybody
20:28
Speaker 2: and everybody. They would bribe officials to keep new phone
20:32
Speaker 2: companies from being allowed to develop or found themselves. It
20:37
Speaker 2: was really ruthless and one of the reasons it was
20:40
Speaker 2: ruthless is because JP Morgan by this time was the
20:43
Speaker 2: head of either AT and T or Bell's board of directors,
20:48
Speaker 2: and Bell eventually bought AT and T and just consolidated, consolidated, consolidated.
20:53
Speaker 2: They would either following JP Morgan's typical example, they would
20:57
Speaker 2: either buy up the competition or crushed them out of
21:00
Speaker 2: existence if the competition didn't want to sell at AT
21:03
Speaker 2: and T Bell's price. So this is just how it
21:08
Speaker 2: was like that. I don't remember what year the US
21:11
Speaker 2: government finally stepped in and broke up Bell into smaller
21:15
Speaker 2: versions of itself, but it was a It was a monopoly,
21:19
Speaker 2: a government sanctioned monopoly for decades, and in some ways
21:23
Speaker 2: this was good because in other cases, where like local
21:29
Speaker 2: phone companies were allowed to compete, it was super cluege.
21:32
Speaker 2: Sometimes you had to subscribe to two different companies to
21:35
Speaker 2: be able to call two different friends depending on who
21:37
Speaker 2: they were subscribed to. The rates were all over the place.
21:41
Speaker 2: There was very little regulation, so having this monopoly was
21:45
Speaker 2: good in some ways, but in others. Monopolies typically overall,
21:49
Speaker 2: are not good for the health of an economy.
21:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and AT and T American Telephone and Telegraph. We
21:56
Speaker 1: should point out that they were approached before that and expired,
22:00
Speaker 1: and the reason they were initially approached was, I mean,
22:03
Speaker 1: it was part of the plan just to you know,
22:05
Speaker 1: snap up other companies, but part of it was, Hey,
22:08
Speaker 1: I need AT and T to help me build these
22:11
Speaker 1: long distance lines because that's the future. If we control
22:14
Speaker 1: long distance and no one else has it, then we
22:16
Speaker 1: can even if new companies pop up after this patent expires,
22:21
Speaker 1: if we're the only ones doing long distance, then we
22:23
Speaker 1: can lease those to other companies or not lease them
22:26
Speaker 1: to other companies.
22:27
Speaker 2: Huge, huge point.
22:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, can we talk about phone numbers real quick?
22:33
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think we should talk about phone numbers.
22:36
Speaker 1: Because I don't have a complete handle on because how
22:40
Speaker 1: phone numbers expanded was. You know, it wasn't just one exact,
22:43
Speaker 1: uniform way in every place. It kind of depended on
22:45
Speaker 1: how big the city was, as far as how many
22:47
Speaker 1: digits they were using and stuff like that. So what
22:51
Speaker 1: I've gathered is that from the beginning, it was two
22:54
Speaker 1: to four numbers depending on how big your community was.
22:57
Speaker 1: So sure, you could literally be living in a community
23:00
Speaker 1: and your phone number was seven. Yeah, it could be seven.
23:05
Speaker 1: I guess, well, I don't know zero counts, but let's
23:07
Speaker 1: just say eleven.
23:07
Speaker 2: No, I want to say seven, okay, your.
23:10
Speaker 1: Phone number seven, mine's eleven.
23:11
Speaker 2: Okay.
23:11
Speaker 1: You should get together and make a convenience store. But
23:15
Speaker 1: as things started to expand and grow, obviously you needed
23:19
Speaker 1: more and more numbers. And I remembered seeing in like
23:22
Speaker 1: even like Happy Days and stuff and TV shows like
23:25
Speaker 1: into the sixties and seventies when they would say, you know,
23:28
Speaker 1: a word followed by numbers.
23:31
Speaker 2: Give me klondike five six thousand exactly.
23:35
Speaker 1: And so from this how I understand it is. And
23:38
Speaker 1: if you found something different, let me know. But Klondike
23:41
Speaker 1: would have been the uh, either the switchboard or the
23:45
Speaker 1: central you know, hub for that town. And then whatever
23:50
Speaker 1: the numbers you said would be the actual number.
23:52
Speaker 2: That's five to five.
23:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. As that got busier, cities started using what they
23:56
Speaker 1: called two L in four INN format, so two letter
24:00
Speaker 1: four number, so it would still be klondike five five
24:04
Speaker 1: five five or whatever, but it would be kl and
24:08
Speaker 1: then you would use the four numbers, and then eventually
24:11
Speaker 1: it was I think two L five. Men. They just
24:14
Speaker 1: kept taking away letters and adding numbers. The bigger and
24:17
Speaker 1: bigger your city.
24:18
Speaker 2: Got right and the reason why, like, if you have
24:21
Speaker 2: four numbers, you can accommodate up to ten thousand subscribers.
24:25
Speaker 2: But as you add more and more numbers or even letters,
24:28
Speaker 2: then you can add more and more people. And so
24:31
Speaker 2: I think that the numbers or the letters eventually or
24:35
Speaker 2: initially were like that went to this particular switchboard station,
24:41
Speaker 2: and that was this one group of people in town
24:44
Speaker 2: whose connections were all coming out of this one station.
24:48
Speaker 2: So if you ask for Klondike five five five five,
24:51
Speaker 2: it took you to this one switchboard and then that
24:53
Speaker 2: switchboard operator would find subscriber five five five five and
24:57
Speaker 2: connect it. And the reason also I keep going to
24:59
Speaker 2: cl five is because that's the original five five to
25:03
Speaker 2: five fake number in movies. Like if you watch movies,
25:06
Speaker 2: they ask for Klondike five all the time, like that's
25:08
Speaker 2: the that's the phone number, because the apparently the phone
25:12
Speaker 2: company set aside the five five five exchange for use
25:17
Speaker 2: by movies.
25:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I was told recently in a script I
25:22
Speaker 1: wrote to take that out.
25:23
Speaker 2: Oh really, did you tell them to go to hell?
25:27
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, any kind of script note is just
25:30
Speaker 1: there is no right answer. But this person said, yeah,
25:33
Speaker 1: it just I don't it bugs me because it always
25:35
Speaker 1: takes me out and makes me feel like I'm watching
25:36
Speaker 1: a movie. So I was like, okay, so did.
25:39
Speaker 2: You or did you not tell them to go to
25:40
Speaker 2: hell with their script?
25:41
Speaker 1: Note? Did not. I got a lot of good notes
25:44
Speaker 1: from this person, so right, I was on their side.
25:47
Speaker 1: Is this a bad actor, No, it was a good writer.
25:50
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a big difference. So to get a little
25:55
Speaker 2: further to wrap that up. So those letters were eventually
26:00
Speaker 2: overtaken by numbers. Because again, if you are I don't
26:03
Speaker 2: even know if I said it and we edited it out,
26:05
Speaker 2: but if you look at an old phone, I think
26:07
Speaker 2: even a new phone, still you said it.
26:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay.
26:10
Speaker 2: The numbers are associated with specific letters, so two was
26:13
Speaker 2: associated with ABC, three is associated with the EF and
26:18
Speaker 2: so on. So if it was Klondike, that's kl Both
26:22
Speaker 2: of those are on the five. So eventually it just
26:24
Speaker 2: became five five, five, whatever the rest of the thing is.
26:29
Speaker 2: And when we went to all numbers, that was a
26:32
Speaker 2: big step in the direction of eventually phasing out switchboard operators.
26:38
Speaker 1: Yeah. Then you went seven digits, and then eventually in
26:41
Speaker 1: most places you needed the area code as well, and
26:43
Speaker 1: we went to ten digit.
26:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, but area codes weren't around for a while. I
26:47
Speaker 2: think it was. Oh, I don't remember exactly when it was,
26:51
Speaker 2: but I'm looking. That's why I'm still kind of talking
26:54
Speaker 2: a little bit.
26:54
Speaker 1: I mean, we've talked about this before because we both
26:59
Speaker 1: have our phone numbers memorized growing up, and that was
27:01
Speaker 1: definitely not an area code ninety one nine O one nine.
27:04
Speaker 2: That was me. I grew up with an area code.
27:07
Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, from the moment you could remember, No,
27:10
Speaker 1: you're right.
27:10
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I'm sorry, there was just an exchange. It wasn't. Yes,
27:13
Speaker 2: you're right. Mine was three eight two nine four h
27:16
Speaker 2: A right, Sorry, those.
27:17
Speaker 1: Two numbers called each other like in some weird portal opened.
27:21
Speaker 2: That would be pretty awesome. What would be through the portal?
27:25
Speaker 2: Either gnomes or robots. It's got to be one of
27:27
Speaker 2: the two, really earthy or really futuristic.
27:31
Speaker 1: Adam Curry?
27:31
Speaker 2: Wait, wait which one?
27:33
Speaker 1: Oh, Adam Curry dressed as a gnome?
27:36
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you?
27:38
Speaker 1: I knew you weren't gonna be satisfied. And until I too.
27:43
Speaker 1: Should we talk a little bit about who this witchboard
27:45
Speaker 1: operators were, all right? Or should we take our break
27:50
Speaker 1: till I feel like.
27:51
Speaker 2: We went long before the first break, So keep going.
27:54
Speaker 1: All right, Well, most of these uh switchboard operators were women,
27:59
Speaker 1: and initially they tried teenage boys. But I love this
28:03
Speaker 1: little factoid. Kyle dug up. Apparently there was a quote
28:06
Speaker 1: that said, unfortunately they matched insult for insult for Canadian
28:11
Speaker 1: boys that were operators. So if like and as we'll
28:14
Speaker 1: see there, you know, people call up and be surly
28:17
Speaker 1: and or in a bad mood, or if it didn't
28:18
Speaker 1: work right, they'd be cussing. These teenage boys will give
28:21
Speaker 1: it right back to them. And so customer service is
28:24
Speaker 1: suffering in the eighteen eighties because all these you know,
28:26
Speaker 1: wisemouth kids. So they started hiring mostly women. In the
28:31
Speaker 1: early twentieth century. I think eighty percent of ball operators
28:33
Speaker 1: were women. Here and abroad they were called Hello girls,
28:38
Speaker 1: ironic since apparently they weren't even allowed to say hello.
28:41
Speaker 1: We'll get to that in a second. And Emma Nutt
28:44
Speaker 1: was the first phone operator switchboard operator hired by AGB
28:49
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy eight at a wopping wage of about
28:53
Speaker 1: a nickel an hour.
28:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is even adjusted for inflation, that's only a
28:58
Speaker 2: dollar fifty an hour. Today. Yeah, pretty pretty meager, but
29:03
Speaker 2: she was. She was a pioneer, and probably one of
29:07
Speaker 2: the reasons why she kept her job was eventually it
29:10
Speaker 2: had a lot of prestige to it. It was one
29:13
Speaker 2: of the more respected jobs a woman can have. But
29:15
Speaker 2: it's also one of the very few jobs of women
29:17
Speaker 2: could have. So women proved to be a fairly docile
29:21
Speaker 2: workforce because they had so few choices other choices for work,
29:28
Speaker 2: and so they were exploited to the bone as phone operators.
29:32
Speaker 2: Sadly as it turned out.
29:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, it took everything I had not to make a
29:36
Speaker 1: nut job joke.
29:41
Speaker 2: Can we hear it?
29:41
Speaker 1: But I guess I sort of just did. Yeh, I
29:43
Speaker 1: no know. Her name was Emma Nut and everyone's like,
29:45
Speaker 1: I want, I want a nut job.
29:48
Speaker 2: That was good? Sorry, you got me.
29:50
Speaker 1: Uh So here's the deal, though it was very specific criteria.
29:55
Speaker 1: You could just waltz in there and get this job
29:56
Speaker 1: because like you said, there wasn't a lot of choice
29:58
Speaker 1: for women in the workplace, and eventually they would pay them,
30:01
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, not as much as their male counterparts,
30:05
Speaker 1: of course, because that's just how things worked. Very sadly,
30:07
Speaker 1: but it was a very It was known as a
30:10
Speaker 1: pretty good job to get in the US, you had
30:14
Speaker 1: to be well spoken, you had to be a high
30:15
Speaker 1: school graduate. In Canada they sought women with good eyesight
30:20
Speaker 1: no cough. You had to be of sufficient height and
30:23
Speaker 1: were physically fit in order to tackle the exacting work
30:26
Speaker 1: at the switchboard. And also this is in Canada also
30:31
Speaker 1: a reference of moral character from their clergyman.
30:34
Speaker 2: Wow, this is to get a job as a switchboard operator.
30:38
Speaker 1: Yeah. What about in the UK, because that's pretty fun too.
30:42
Speaker 2: You were required to speak the King's English and not
30:45
Speaker 2: in a Cockney way or a Northern way.
30:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.
30:50
Speaker 2: And so women would accept these positions. Again, these were
30:52
Speaker 2: coveted positions in some cases that you paid them and
30:56
Speaker 2: gave them financial freedom. They were looked upon with respect
31:00
Speaker 2: by their community. Like to make it as an operator,
31:03
Speaker 2: even be hired as an operator. It's told the rest
31:06
Speaker 2: of society this one's a good egg, because we only
31:09
Speaker 2: hire the best eggs. One of the things, though, like
31:13
Speaker 2: you said, was that there were really strict rules on
31:17
Speaker 2: their behavior, how they comported themselves when speaking to customers,
31:22
Speaker 2: and then just how they even like sat and positioned
31:25
Speaker 2: themselves at their switchboard. There's a nineteen ten booklet that
31:30
Speaker 2: the Bell company wrote that Kyle found where they were saying, like,
31:34
Speaker 2: do not answer these calls with Hello? They said, would
31:38
Speaker 2: you rush into an office or up to the door
31:41
Speaker 2: of a residence and blurt out, Hello, Hello, who am
31:43
Speaker 2: I talking to? And when they put it like that,
31:45
Speaker 2: it's actually a reasonable thing. But what's funny also is
31:49
Speaker 2: there was a big debate initially when phones were invented
31:55
Speaker 2: between whether the proper way to answer a call was
31:58
Speaker 2: hello or hoy hoy. And Alexander Graham Bell was a
32:02
Speaker 2: hoy hoy boy, and Thomas Edison, who was his big
32:06
Speaker 2: rival in founding phone companies, he was a Hello guy.
32:11
Speaker 2: And that's why you'll hear mister Burns say hoy hoy
32:13
Speaker 2: when he answers the phone. It's just going to show
32:16
Speaker 2: how ridiculously old he is.
32:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about this on one episode. It was
32:20
Speaker 1: a long time ago, but I used to have a
32:24
Speaker 1: Hoya hoy written on my first flip phone when you
32:28
Speaker 1: opened it up, the little home screen, because before they
32:30
Speaker 1: had pictures and graphics, just said a hoya hoy written.
32:33
Speaker 2: Did you write it in nail polish?
32:35
Speaker 1: No? No, no, it was typed out, and you know,
32:38
Speaker 1: instead of like Chuck's phone or something.
32:39
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I never had a phone that had any
32:41
Speaker 2: feature like that.
32:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know these were early flip phones.
32:46
Speaker 2: I thought you actually wrote it on the screen.
32:50
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, it was typed letters.
32:54
Speaker 2: So oh. There were a couple of things that I
32:56
Speaker 2: saw that were really harsh. There was a view that
33:00
Speaker 2: I found I think American Experience. They did a documentary
33:03
Speaker 2: on the telephone and they were interviewing like some of
33:06
Speaker 2: these original operators, and one of them was like, so
33:08
Speaker 2: they used tailorism. So there was like five supervisors to
33:13
Speaker 2: every single like switchboard operator, and they would just hover
33:16
Speaker 2: over you like a hawk. They would constantly be like,
33:19
Speaker 2: come on girls, faster, faster, that kind of stuff. And
33:23
Speaker 2: this woman was like, if you even lifted your head
33:25
Speaker 2: up from your switchboard, not even looked around, not even
33:29
Speaker 2: talked like, you just lifted your head up, for supervisor
33:32
Speaker 2: would be on you, being like, what do you need?
33:34
Speaker 2: What's going on? There was another one that I think
33:37
Speaker 2: it was on history dot com. They were writing about
33:39
Speaker 2: telephone operators and they they quoted from a woman who
33:44
Speaker 2: was like one of the original ones, who said I
33:46
Speaker 2: had to work ten unpaid hours as punishment for a
33:51
Speaker 2: single giggle, Like that's how how just regulated the women
33:58
Speaker 2: operators were for decades and that was just part of
34:01
Speaker 2: the job.
34:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. I never did telemarketing in college, but that was
34:05
Speaker 1: a big dial America was a big job in Athens.
34:07
Speaker 1: I'm sure you remember. You probably worked for Dialo America.
34:10
Speaker 2: I didn't, but I worked for another company. I have
34:12
Speaker 2: this story about that.
34:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a big, easy job to get in
34:16
Speaker 1: Athens and I'm sure many colleges. But the central benefit
34:20
Speaker 1: of any job like this is being able to put
34:22
Speaker 1: your hand over the receiver and roll your eyes to
34:26
Speaker 1: the person next to you and go, oh my god,
34:27
Speaker 1: you got to get a load of this guy, or
34:29
Speaker 1: you should hear this lady's voice. Like if you deny
34:32
Speaker 1: your work or that, then you're not going to have
34:35
Speaker 1: a happy workforce. That's the one perk you get when
34:38
Speaker 1: you're not on a and right in front of someone
34:41
Speaker 1: is that you can say something quietly and have a
34:44
Speaker 1: quick laugh.
34:45
Speaker 2: Yeah. They could not do that. They would get in
34:47
Speaker 2: trouble and possibly fired for that kind of stuff.
34:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
34:52
Speaker 2: So, actually, one of the cool things is they figured
34:55
Speaker 2: out that Okay, wait, there's thousands of us in this
34:57
Speaker 2: workforce let's form a union. And they were told no,
35:00
Speaker 2: they can't form a union. So they said, okay, we're
35:02
Speaker 2: going on strike. And I think in nineteen nineteen New
35:05
Speaker 2: England telephone operators walked out and just crippled the phone
35:10
Speaker 2: network for basically half of New England. And the company
35:16
Speaker 2: was very quick to be like, Okay, what did you
35:17
Speaker 2: say you wanted to begin and yeah, I went back exactly.
35:20
Speaker 2: So that was pretty cool. But for the most part
35:22
Speaker 2: they were treated rather poorly.
35:24
Speaker 1: They were, and they in the face of you know,
35:27
Speaker 1: like I said, some people would call in cursing. There
35:29
Speaker 1: were men who would use foul language. Sometimes they would
35:31
Speaker 1: get charged extra for their call. They would sometimes people
35:35
Speaker 1: would call and say like, hey, do you know what
35:37
Speaker 1: time it is? Or do you know what goes in
35:40
Speaker 1: this recipe? Or do you know what time the train
35:41
Speaker 1: runs from the station?
35:43
Speaker 2: Or does this shirt make me look fat?
35:45
Speaker 1: Yeah? Exactly, And they're acting like information basically rather than
35:52
Speaker 1: just connecting calls. You know. I guess they weren't being
35:57
Speaker 1: as ragned in everywhere because or maybe they were to
36:00
Speaker 1: the customer is always right. I don't know they were.
36:03
Speaker 2: Then there were there was like five things you could
36:05
Speaker 2: say to a customer, no matter what they said to you,
36:08
Speaker 2: no matter how abusive they were, anything like that, you
36:10
Speaker 2: could say like thank you or something like that.
36:12
Speaker 1: You'd safron.
36:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, that was the safe word.
36:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
36:16
Speaker 2: The supervisor come in and be like, hey, hey, what
36:18
Speaker 2: are you saying?
36:19
Speaker 1: Well, if they got asked them in a recipe and
36:21
Speaker 1: maybe they can only say five things, really hymns them
36:24
Speaker 1: in So.
36:25
Speaker 2: Are you allowed to leave? If not? Say saffron.
36:29
Speaker 1: Here's one fun little thing. In World War One, there
36:32
Speaker 1: were two hundred and twenty three American women who served
36:35
Speaker 1: in Europe as switchboard operators because France's phone system was wrecked,
36:40
Speaker 1: so the US Army Signal Corps literally built its own
36:43
Speaker 1: phone system and had bilingual American switchboard operators working there
36:49
Speaker 1: and sometimes giving like really important direct orders about you know,
36:54
Speaker 1: bombings and raids and things like that.
36:56
Speaker 2: Well, they would pass them along. I don't know if
36:58
Speaker 2: they were making up the orders.
36:59
Speaker 1: And do you think anybody would have thought that I did?
37:05
Speaker 1: You thought that's what I was saying.
37:08
Speaker 2: No, but it was still hilarious to hear you say
37:10
Speaker 2: it exactly.
37:12
Speaker 1: But this is the cool part. After sixty years, Finally,
37:15
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine these women were recognized as veterans.
37:20
Speaker 2: I know that was very cool. It's sad that it
37:22
Speaker 2: took that long, but at least they finally got there. Yeah,
37:26
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I keep imagining whole cadre of operators just
37:31
Speaker 2: making up orders.
37:32
Speaker 1: For this lady just sent to storm the beach. It's
37:35
Speaker 1: just chaos, all right. Now, we're going to take our break.
37:40
Speaker 1: We're running a bit long, so we're gonna come back
37:41
Speaker 1: and finish up on how it all ended with automation.
37:45
Speaker 1: Right after this stucks net stucks stuck. I don't know,
37:50
Speaker 1: you know it stucks stuck.
37:52
Speaker 2: That sucks. It's a great name.
37:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the name of it.
37:56
Speaker 2: It's a great name. All right, stucks met with an okay, chuck.
38:13
Speaker 2: So I think I said before that once they started
38:16
Speaker 2: going to all numeric, well numbers, that was like a
38:22
Speaker 2: huge first step toward automating the system and eventually phasing
38:25
Speaker 2: out human operators. And one of the reasons why is
38:29
Speaker 2: because you can take numbers and you can quantify them essentially,
38:33
Speaker 2: and that's what those original phones, the roadary phones, then
38:36
Speaker 2: apparently the fake keypad phones would do. When you dialed
38:41
Speaker 2: a number, your finger would eventually hit a stop. For
38:45
Speaker 2: like a three, the stop was closer, for the zero
38:48
Speaker 2: of the stop was in eternity away, because once you
38:51
Speaker 2: hit the stop, the dial would go back to the
38:55
Speaker 2: original position, and as it did, it would put out,
38:59
Speaker 2: you know, three pulses, say three electrical impulses when you
39:03
Speaker 2: dial the three. And what that did was it told
39:06
Speaker 2: the automated switches that were eventually invented to start paying
39:12
Speaker 2: attention and start dialing some numbers here because I just
39:15
Speaker 2: sent some electrical impulses.
39:17
Speaker 1: That's right. I think you mean pulses, don't you.
39:20
Speaker 2: What did I say plus impulses? Did I?
39:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a.
39:25
Speaker 2: Little late in the day and my brain's mush from
39:28
Speaker 2: all the engineering week we've been doing.
39:30
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm not just sitting here as correct you guy.
39:33
Speaker 1: I just I think it's kind of funny. And somebody
39:35
Speaker 1: would have written in and it's like, why are these
39:37
Speaker 1: phones having impulses?
39:38
Speaker 2: No, hey, you got me back for the operators giving direction.
39:45
Speaker 1: Here is where my mind exploded because I didn't learn
39:48
Speaker 1: this yesterday. He's still liking that one. This didn't I
39:52
Speaker 1: didn't learn this yesterday, but I learned it. I think
39:54
Speaker 1: the last time you explain this because We explained that
39:56
Speaker 1: in another episode about how you dial oh yeah a
40:00
Speaker 1: rotary phone. I did not know that it was the
40:04
Speaker 1: retreat of that dial back to its original position? Was
40:07
Speaker 1: what was being quantified and pulsed?
40:11
Speaker 2: Do you think it was the dial up? Like when
40:13
Speaker 2: you got.
40:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, you put your finger in it and you dial
40:16
Speaker 1: the four over? You know, as a kid, you just
40:19
Speaker 1: think a little like, yep, I'm hitting the four, and
40:21
Speaker 1: I just take it out and it goes back to
40:22
Speaker 1: its place. It going back to its place is the
40:25
Speaker 1: key yeah, Which I don't.
40:27
Speaker 2: Know if I knew that either, though it seems new
40:29
Speaker 2: to me, so if I did explain it before, it
40:32
Speaker 2: didn't stick.
40:33
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool, though, ton't. I mean, this is just
40:35
Speaker 1: a fun little fact for anyone who still understands what
40:37
Speaker 1: those are.
40:39
Speaker 2: One thing I do think we talked about in the
40:40
Speaker 2: Phone Freaking episode was the invention of the Strouder switch,
40:45
Speaker 2: which was invented by an undertaker named Almon Brown. Strouder
40:50
Speaker 2: and the reason that he can't like. An undertaker in
40:52
Speaker 2: Kansas City invented the automated phone switchboard because, as legend
40:58
Speaker 2: has it, he was losing business to a rival undertaker
41:04
Speaker 2: whose wife was the town operator. So when people call
41:07
Speaker 2: up and said undertaker police, she would just rout him
41:09
Speaker 2: to her husband's business and leave Strouger's business out. And
41:13
Speaker 2: he's like, you know what, I want to get rid
41:15
Speaker 2: of the operator. So he went and invented one of
41:18
Speaker 2: the more sophisticated pieces of technology that was around at
41:21
Speaker 2: the time. And this is in eighteen ninety that he
41:24
Speaker 2: came up with the first automated switch. And it is impressive.
41:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the one that led to the
41:31
Speaker 1: rotary switch that we're talking about though, right, yes, do
41:35
Speaker 1: you know how his work specifically.
41:37
Speaker 2: Or difference, Actually, it's really fascinating.
41:40
Speaker 1: Well, let's hear it. We got one minute, all.
41:42
Speaker 2: Right, So let's say that you dialed that three, right,
41:46
Speaker 2: that first number, those three impulses I think in slang
41:51
Speaker 2: it's just called pulses. They went down the line and
41:54
Speaker 2: they hit the first switch, and they told the first switch, okay,
41:56
Speaker 2: we're going to three, and so that would narrow down
42:00
Speaker 2: the number of subscribers to this telephone switchboard whose numbers
42:04
Speaker 2: started with three, oh yeah, and then the next number
42:07
Speaker 2: would come in five, yeah, right, Five more pulses of
42:11
Speaker 2: electricity would come to the second switch, and it would
42:13
Speaker 2: tell that switch. Okay, now we're just trying to get
42:16
Speaker 2: to the people whose first two numbers are three, five,
42:18
Speaker 2: and so on and so on, until finally all what eight, no, yeah,
42:23
Speaker 2: eight seven numbers were dialed, and so it led to
42:28
Speaker 2: the only person whose phone line could possibly be connected
42:33
Speaker 2: to this specific circuit of seven numbers, and then it
42:37
Speaker 2: would connect the call from the caller to the call lee.
42:41
Speaker 1: Wow, that's pretty cool.
42:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really amazing. This guy came up with this
42:45
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety.
42:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we didn't even really mention it
42:49
Speaker 1: seems obvious, but I guess we should say. The reason
42:51
Speaker 1: they were looking to phase out and go into automation
42:53
Speaker 1: is kind of like every reason always is money. You know,
42:57
Speaker 1: less overhead. You as more more switchboards grew, you had
43:02
Speaker 1: well a the switchboards cost a lot of money. They
43:04
Speaker 1: cost you know, you had to have land in a building,
43:06
Speaker 1: and you had to have people to operate them, and
43:09
Speaker 1: they just couldn't keep hiring more and more people. I
43:11
Speaker 1: think at one point they said, you know, we'd need
43:13
Speaker 1: a million switchboard operators and that just wasn't even a
43:17
Speaker 1: possibility at the time. So automation was always on the horizon. Interestingly,
43:22
Speaker 1: along those lines, long distance switching took a lot longer,
43:28
Speaker 1: like it was into the late nineteen sixties and even
43:31
Speaker 1: some places in the seventies where you still had operators
43:34
Speaker 1: that had to connect long distance lines because it was
43:37
Speaker 1: as Kyle said that it was just no alternative to
43:39
Speaker 1: human intelligence. It was too complex at the time. But eventually,
43:46
Speaker 1: you know, they figured all that out.
43:48
Speaker 2: But that meant that there were humans who were walking
43:52
Speaker 2: around knowing how to connect to Tacoma. They knew the
43:57
Speaker 2: combination of switches, yeah, yeah, connector the number of levers
44:01
Speaker 2: to pull, the number of like wishes to make I
44:03
Speaker 2: don't know, okay, and they would they knew how to
44:06
Speaker 2: connect to call like that and not just to peek
44:09
Speaker 2: a ta coma like whatever city to whatever city. They
44:13
Speaker 2: just knew how to view it. And I mean that's yeah,
44:16
Speaker 2: that's just an overlooked part of history that there were
44:18
Speaker 2: people walking around who knew how to do these complex
44:22
Speaker 2: algorithms basically, and they were all different for depending on
44:26
Speaker 2: what city was calling what city. So that kept operators
44:29
Speaker 2: around for much longer than they would have been had
44:32
Speaker 2: long distance not existed, because they got phased out at
44:35
Speaker 2: the local level, but for long distance calling they were
44:37
Speaker 2: just too valuable to get rid of at the time.
44:41
Speaker 1: What happens when you dial zero today from a landline?
44:44
Speaker 1: Is there an operator?
44:45
Speaker 2: Well? Number one there's no landlines. There's just you get
44:48
Speaker 2: like an alarm at somebody's house alarm. I think maybe yeah,
44:52
Speaker 2: And then number two there's no zero anymore. Gen Z
44:56
Speaker 2: got rid of it all right, good deal. So I
44:59
Speaker 2: think by the the seventies the whole thing was digitized.
45:04
Speaker 2: There was no corded switchboards any longer. But there were
45:08
Speaker 2: some like pockets of switchboards that were still around, right,
45:11
Speaker 2: that held on long beyond the time it was necessary.
45:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a couple of competing last switchboard last operators.
45:19
Speaker 1: One that you'll see a lot online as widely recognized
45:22
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three Bryant Pond, Maine. I think this
45:26
Speaker 1: specification heroes. It was the last hand cranked telephone system
45:31
Speaker 1: and switchboard, like you know, you like you've seen the
45:35
Speaker 1: old movies. There's a box on the wall and you go,
45:38
Speaker 1: you crank a thing.
45:40
Speaker 2: Give me Kondike five six thousand exactly.
45:44
Speaker 1: And Susan Glynes was the last operator there. London's thank
45:50
Speaker 1: you Kyle was at Infield and this was nineteen sixty
45:58
Speaker 1: I think was retired. But the last caretaker telephone operator
46:02
Speaker 1: in the and the UK retired in eighty four. But
46:05
Speaker 1: then you found one in California that was ninety one.
46:08
Speaker 1: And as best I could tell, that was a private
46:11
Speaker 1: a sort of very small customer based private phone company
46:15
Speaker 1: in Kerman.
46:15
Speaker 2: And what was sweet was I saw one of the
46:18
Speaker 2: reasons that the owner of the company held on to
46:21
Speaker 2: human operators for so long was because there were so
46:24
Speaker 2: many migrants who lived in town that the phone operator
46:29
Speaker 2: was bilingual. It could help connect calls between people who
46:33
Speaker 2: spoke two different languages.
46:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, all the not even the final one. All of
46:37
Speaker 1: their operators were bilingual.
46:40
Speaker 2: Oh is that right?
46:41
Speaker 1: Yeah?
46:42
Speaker 2: Oh, very nice.
46:43
Speaker 1: I think that was their specialty.
46:46
Speaker 2: No, serious, that's what they said at the company picnic,
46:49
Speaker 2: that's our I.
46:50
Speaker 1: Mean, I think that's honestly. They had most of their
46:53
Speaker 1: customer base were people with family in Mexico, and so
46:56
Speaker 1: they just had a niche for miners.
46:58
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know why you're getting them that.
47:00
Speaker 2: I don't believe you. I believe what you're.
47:02
Speaker 1: Saying, because he keeps laughing at it, going that's funny.
47:06
Speaker 2: I'm still thinking about the operators telling everybody to bomb
47:09
Speaker 2: Roy Win or something. You got anything else? No, big
47:13
Speaker 2: thanks to Kyle for helping us out with this one.
47:15
Speaker 2: It was very technical and complicated. And since I said
47:19
Speaker 2: technical and complicated, it's time for listener mail.
47:25
Speaker 1: Here's our Joe Thiseman follow up. We got quite a
47:27
Speaker 1: few emails, and in fact a few from people whose
47:30
Speaker 1: parents went to school with Joe Thiseman, the former quarterback
47:34
Speaker 1: of the former Washington Redskins football team now the Commanders.
47:39
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I uster freelance for a video company that
47:41
Speaker 1: did a lot of conferences, and one time Joe Eisman
47:44
Speaker 1: was the keynote speaker. The way he told the story
47:47
Speaker 1: about his last name as his follows. Growing up, his
47:50
Speaker 1: dad was very firm that their last name was pronounced
47:52
Speaker 1: these men. Apparently, his dad would get quite cross when
47:55
Speaker 1: folks would pronounce it wrong. People often said it wrong,
47:57
Speaker 1: so Joe would call his dad and have him correct them.
48:01
Speaker 2: Dad, they said it wrong, but Dead's gonna sue you.
48:04
Speaker 1: He snapped my leg. According to Joe's story, when he
48:09
Speaker 1: was a candidate for the Heisman Trophy, his college coaches
48:12
Speaker 1: thought it would be better if it was pronounced thisman
48:14
Speaker 1: to rhyme obviously, So again Joe called his dad to
48:17
Speaker 1: ask him, and his dad responded, I've told you it's thighsman.
48:21
Speaker 1: So it sounds like Joe has made kind of a
48:23
Speaker 1: fun little apocryphal story about this, but it seems confirmed
48:27
Speaker 1: it was thiseman heard it from the man's own mouth.
48:30
Speaker 1: And that's from Karen and Gil Pennington.
48:34
Speaker 2: Very nice, appreciate that big time.
48:36
Speaker 1: Who was it, Karen, Karen Pennington, Thank.
48:39
Speaker 2: You very much, Karen, I'm just gonna call him Karen
48:41
Speaker 2: Sure if you want to get in touch with us
48:44
Speaker 2: like Karen did and give us a great story that
48:47
Speaker 2: kind of sums up, ties up, circles up, a story
48:51
Speaker 2: that we talked about. We love that kind of thing.
48:53
Speaker 2: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
48:56
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com. RAO.
49:02
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
49:05
Speaker 1: more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
49:09
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.