Long before the computer-generated voice that you now hear when you dial the operator or directory assistance, there actually were real human beings called telephone operators who answered those calls.
From the 1880s to around 1905, the calls came into telephone rooms like the one you see below. Each operator sat at their own switchboard wall and routed the calls.
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| Telephone rooms like this one had walls of switchboards with operators who connected calls because there were no phone numbers in the 1880s. |
In the infancy of the telephone invention, there were huge switchboards that connected customer calls but early on, they were connecting primarily business-to-business calls until private residences had telephones installed in the late 1890s.
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| There were special long-distance phones in "silence cabinets" and the customer paid for the call afterward. If he didn't pay, he was locked in the cabinet until police arrived! |
The first residential phones were the windup (no dial) box-type phones. Department stores and mail-order catalogues like Sears and Montgomery Ward advertised the telephones for sale to homeowners starting around 1896. Although it was an expense to buy the phones, the money that was paid to the phone company was "rental money" - the customer didn't "own" the phone. Except for housing, most people viewed rental money as wasted money when they could own something outright.
The first phones were pretty simple to use. I couldn't find an advertisement for a windup phone dated from the 1890s. The closest windup phone I found was the Sears ad below from 1908 that sold two phones for $9.50 (which was $264 in 2019 dollars), but they only had a distance of up to 5 miles. Notice the weight!
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| Sears Roebuck's 1908 catalogue advertised this Battery-Operated phone with a range of 50 feet up to 5 miles. So if you wanted to talk to someone who was 20 miles away, this phone wouldn't do the job. |
The residential telephone didn't have a dial in the 1880s and 1890s because there were no phone numbers. It was a two-person setup which meant that your phone had to be directly connected to the person you wanted to talk to. Both of your phones stayed connected until one terminated the arrangement.
To use, you simply wound the handle to the right of your phonebox which made the other phone ring. When they answered, then you were able to talk to each other uninterrupted. Because only the two parties were connected, there were no intrusions from other people as you would a few years later on a party line.
The downside was that you couldn't talk to anyone else on that phone. If you wanted to talk to other people, you had to get more phones.
Around 1904 when the telephone lines were done being constructed within cities and from city to city, home phones came with dials. They were able to call multiple phones using phone numbers which were assigned around the end of 1904. But calls that were long-distance, defined as ten miles or more, were operator-assisted. They answered your call with "Number please?" then connected your call.
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| Beginning in 1904, operators answered with "Number please?" and was used by all Bell Companies by 1912 |
Given that there was a depression going on, telephones were a luxury and rather costly by 1877 standards. If you shared a phone number with a party line, you not only had people listen in on all your calls, but your bill was much cheaper.
As seen in the picture below, the annual rental bill in 1877 for two telephones was $20 per year (which is $488.71 in 2019 dollars). For a party line and two phones, the bill averaged $8.00 per year (which is $223 in 2019 dollars) to $14 per year (which is $391.50 in 2019 dollars).
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| Two phones were leased at $20 in 1877 came to $488.71 in 2019 dollars) |
You may remember reading in your history lessons in elementary school that Alexander Graham Bell applied for and was granted a patent for his telephone invention in 1876.
What you may have forgotten is that there were others who contributed to the invention. As with most of our modern technological conveniences, inventors of other devices had marked their place in history when they filed patents to document their contribution on various steps of the process, so Alexander Graham Bell was actually expanding on the progress made by other inventors before he invented his final product.
In 1667, British physicist Robert Hooke invented the acoustic string phone, which was a tin-can telephone similar to the toy you may have played with as a child of the 1950s and referred to as the lover's phone.
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| Lover's Phone, two tin cans and a piece of wire |
In 1753, Scottish scientist Charles Morrison was credited as developing a theory that each letter of the alphabet could be transmitted by wire - the first idea for a telegraph. But he didn't hold a patent on the telegraph machine that was in use from 1837 onward. That was Samuel Morse, also the inventor of Morse Code.
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| Morse Code was developed in 1837 by Samuel Morse, but the forerunner was a theory developed by Charles Morrison in 1753 |
For over 100 years, the only form of communication was the telegraph. In 1875, Bell was experimenting with his harmonic telegraph which was used to help teach the deaf but it was his first inkling that sound could be transmitted over the wires. In March 1876, Bell said to Mr. Watson, his assistant "Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you."
Thomas Edison had his hand in there as did Johann Philipp Reis, Elisha Gray and those seen here.
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| Each man contributed something to the final invention. |
It wasn't enough just to invent the telephone. The amount of work that went into bringing it into every home and business was astounding. Businesses got first dibs on telephone installation, but a lot of work had to be done first - miles and miles of wiring.
In 1877 the first telephone line was constructed from Boston, Massachusetts and Somerville, Massachusetts.
By 1880, there were almost 48,000 telephones across the United States. In 1881, telephone lines to Providence, Rhode Island were connected to Boston, Massachusetts. In 1892 lines between Chicago and New York were constructed and by 1894 New York and Boston were connected.
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| Bell Telephone Switchboard Exchange buildings were in every neighborhood |
At the same time, the switchboards and switchboard exchanges were installed in buildings, one in nearly every neighborhood to answer the calls within the five-mile radius which was the capability of most phones at that time. Local calls could be routed through the city by operators and they could also relay long-distance calls from one city to another.
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| Switchboard Exchange (1950s) |
If you are 60 years old or older, you might remember the Bell Telephone Building in your neighborhood. The only way you knew what the building was for was because of the telephone company vehicles in the parking lot.
Bell Telephone later became AT & T, and finally, Verizon. As the computer age approached, the telephone exchange buildings were phased out.
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| Sears 1916, there is still no dial on the phone yet the prices went up a lot. |
As more people got phones installed in their homes, the system had to be tweaked to keep up with demand. More operators were hired to man the switchboards. I know in my city, besides healthcare and the Electric Company, the next biggest employer was Bell Telephone Company.
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| Switchboard operators in Seattle Washington in 1952 |
Although Alexander Graham Bell holds the patent for the telephone and we can see that other people contributed to the process until Bell developed the final product, since then, many people helped to improve Bell's telephone invention even better - from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs.
And like many other inventions past, present and future, there will always be contributors who will be credited with inventing parts of the process along the way. When the final product is presented to the public, like Bell, Morse, and Edison, that is the guy whose name will go in the history books as the person who obtained a patent on the invention.
You can read the story of Alexander Graham Bell's years of experiments to his final invention here.
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