If you've ever sat in the cell phone waiting lot at Sea-Tac waiting for your mom's plane to touch down or listened to your messages while driving 65 mph down I-5, you know how deeply the telephone has penetrated American life. While it's true that wireless technologies have transformed communication in the last decade, the introduction of the first telephones in the late 19th century began an even more dramatic transition.
SEATTLE'S FIRST TELEPHONES
Seattleites first saw the telephone demonstrated in 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell patented the device. According to an observer, Colonel Larabee sang "Swanee River" in Occidental Square; his voice traveled over existing telegraph wires to West Seattle, where "every word of it was heard across the bay."
Five years later, on March 7, 1883, the Sunset Telephone & Telegraph Co., a Bell subsidiary, began service with 90 subscribers and one operator. Business professionals such as lawyers and doctors had the majority of telephones; there were only 19 residential customers. At that time the telephone was conceived and marketed primarily as a business tool - a costly one at that, with a $25 installation fee and monthly payments of $2.50 to $7.
TELEPHONE USE EXPANDS
During the boom that followed the Klondike Gold Rush, telephone use expanded rapidly. In an effort to appeal to a mass market, Bell lowered its rates, and the advent of shared "party lines" made the service even cheaper. In 1902, the Independent Telephone Co. started a competing service in Seattle, and for 10 years the city had two separate telephone systems - Sunset customers could not call Independent subscribers. In order to reach both groups, businesses had to have two phone lines, two phone numbers - and two phone bills.
Customers complained about such inconveniences, along with poor service, noisy lines, and high rates - but they continued to sign up in record numbers. Struggling to keep up with the demand for service, providers complained in turn that "the telephone is going beyond its original design... a large percentage of telephones... are used more in entertainment, diversion, [and] social intercourse... than in actual cases of business or household necessity."
Company executives dreamed up ways to limit "the frivolous use of residence telephones," to little avail. As early as 1909 "eavesdropping research" showed that half of all calls in Seattle had a social purpose, and by the 1920s there were twice as many residential phones as business phones. With or without the companies' approval, people had realized that calling one another up just to chat was fun.
"HELLO, OPERATOR?"
A hundred years ago, a telephone call required not only wires, but also a deep reservoir of patience and a strong pair of lungs. The process went something like this: you turned a magneto crank on your telephone, which rang a bell on the operator's switchboard, letting her know you wanted to make a call. The flap corresponding to your number would drop open on the switchboard, telling her which line to connect. Then she would plug a line into your jack and ask what number you wanted to call.
For a local call, she'd connect your line directly to the other party's jack. For non-local calls, you would be connected to the long distance operator, who would connect you to the right city and time the call for billing purposes. Long distance service was expensive - in 1907 a call to San Francisco cost 75 cents per quarter minute: ads pointed out that "You can easily transmit 30 words in a quarter of a minute." When you were through talking, you'd "ring off" with your magneto crank, so the operator would know she could disconnect you - if you forgot, she'd listen in to see if you were still on the line.
Seattle's first telephone operator, Harriet Hanson-Hall, memorized all the subscribers in the system, as people rarely knew the telephone number of the person they were trying to reach. Operators in the early years were asked to take messages, make wake up calls, and in one case, monitor a baby's crib over the telephone line. They roused doctors in the middle of the night and alerted volunteers in emergencies. Though the work could be tedious and grueling, many of them valued their role at the hub of the social network.
Live operators had their drawbacks - they were accused of listening in on conversations, delaying calls from unpleasant customers, or worse. In fact, an unscrupulous Kansas City operator inspired the invention of the first mechanical switchboard in 1891. Undertaker Almon Strowger, the story goes, suspected the local operator of channeling business calls to one of his rivals, who happened to be a relative of hers. Incensed, he invented an incorruptible device that could find and connect telephone lines automatically.
Some independent companies offered automated switching as soon as it became available, but the Bell Company stuck with operators until the 1920s. By the end of the First World War automated switchboards had improved and proven themselves, and after a series of operator strikes (including one in Seattle in 1917), Bell began to install them.
In 1921 Seattle's Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. - formerly Sunset - launched an educational campaign promoting the concept of "dial service." There was a lot to learn: customers had to learn to use the new dial telephones.
They had to be introduced to the "dial tone" that indicated a free line, instead of an operator asking, "What number?" And telephone numbers became all-numeric, eliminating the old "name exchanges": for instance, numbers in the East Exchange now started with "32" instead of "EA."
By1923 Pacific determined that Seattle was ready for dial service, and they installed the Parkway Exchange "panel office" at Rainier and Graham Street, where it remained in operation for the next 50 years. (If your phone number starts with "72," think "Parkway.")
For the first week, lines were overloaded by customers eager to test the new system, but soon people began to take automated switching for granted.
By 1949 all manual switchboards in Seattle were replaced with mechanical switchboards.
From there it was only a short step to electronic switching, touch-tone phones, dial-up internet, camera phones, Bluetooth ear sets, and the cell phone waiting lot... has that plane landed yet?
SOURCES USED IN THIS ARTICLE:
- Museum of Communications, formerly the Vintage Telephone Equipment Museum, located in Georgetown and open to the public every Tuesday, 8:30 am - 2:00 pm. More info at www.museumofcommunications.org.
- Tanaka, Keiko. "Early Telephone Use in Seattle, 1880s - 1920s," Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Fall 2001
- Brooks, John. Telephone: The First Hundred Years, 1976
- Farley, Tom. "Telephone History Series," www.privateline.com
- Fischer, Claude S. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, 1992
- Schacht, John N. The Making of Telephone Unionism 1920-194, 1985
- www.historylink.org
Rainier Valley Historical Society director Mikala Woodward may be reached via editor@sdistrictjournal.com.[[In-content Ad]]
