My Fear, Love, and Hate of the Telephone
On March 7th, 2020, we celebrated the 143rd anniversary of the patenting of the Telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. Who created the telephone first will remain a mystery. I have an ever evolving relationship with this device. My fear, love, and loathing of the Telephone.
Anniversary of the Patent
The telephone changed our lives in ways we cannot fathom, and likely take for granted. After the written word, the ability to throw your voice over the miles would have been a major game changer then. Once telephones became mainstream, the device improved by leaps and bounds in capability and design. The rest, as they say, is history. But the history of the telephone is still being played out as your read this. Hold it! Hold it! Where are we going with this? Another history lesson? Nothing so mundane. So this is my ode to the telephone, and how it evolved from my interactions with it. Where it’s probably taken a “wrong turn,” and things likely to come.
The Sixties
My interaction with the telephone started in the second half of the sixties. While many of our friends’ phones resembled the one on the left, ours resembled the one on the right:
Source: Telephonelines.net
Source: ebay.com
For the sake of nostalgia and those unfamiliar with this model, this is what it sounded like:
YouTube / Winging It
This was a relatively modern design then. I still envied the older one some had as it resembled most of the phones you saw in the older moves and TV shows like “The Twilight Zone”, etc. The telephone utility company had the monopoly on who installed and maintained your telephone. Where we lived, I believe it was a “parastatal” organization. We lived in a small town and our number consisted of just four digits.
My Phone Phobia
Due to its power to enable one to talk with “anyone out there,” I was in awe of it, and that scared me. I feared picking it up when it rang let alone be brave enough to dial out. I was a shy kid and was nervous talking with people in person; so, talking through that device was out of the question.
My parents tried to get this fear out of me lest I need to use it especially in case of an emergency. I handled the receiver, marveling at its feel and finish, toyed with the rotary dial, fascinated in how it would spring right back to its original position once you dial a digit. This quick rotation back to its resting place complete with mechanical whirring sound convinced me that it was not happy being fiddled with.
Dealing with the Phobia
I read through instructions in the phone book and leafed through how the numbers were listed including the emergency ones. The telephone was quite intimidating for me. I don’t even know when, if at all I dialed out using that phone. I did manage to pick it up a few times when it rang and nervously pass it on to my parents after murmuring a “hello.”
Overcoming my phone phobia was delayed when we moved. My dad being an Air Force man, we lived on the air base. The country was paranoid, and they took away the phones from our homes. Apparently, they feared our communicating with “the enemy” – how laughable is that? So, no phone for the next 10 years or so. We moved to a less paranoid country and voila! There was a phone! I was a teenager now and lot braver.
The Eighties
By the early 80s, gone was the rotary dial and the push button phone was becoming common. My conservative dad continued with the old rotary version as he felt no need for this new one. It wasn’t later when I moved to the US that I was surprised at how they (mis)used the phone.
I was in the dorms and I heard about this weird way that teenagers were communicating with each other using the payphone. The one we had in the dorms looked like this (a fine robust piece of American engineering and design, I may add):
Source: Western Electric Products
The “Party Line”
Curious, I decided to try it. And sure enough, it was like a wild party with multiple people shouting at each other to “link up.” Someone seemed to ask my name and I blurted out my nickname. Some girl kept repeating it trying talk to me. I started speaking and heard some guys laughing at the same time. Convinced this was a hoax, I stopped immediately but kept listening. The girl kept calling my name as I slowly hung up never to do that again as it felt too weird. It had intrigued me and similarly put me off as it felt all wrong. Apparently, the phone company later fixed that issue so I heard. End of the “party line” for the kids.
Then another strange experience. An year later, I was renting an apartment and late one night the phone rang which was exactly like this.:
Source: Quora
Simple and practical, I think this was the best designed phone ever.
The Strangest Phone Call Ever
Late one night, the phone rang. It was a woman who spoke slowly, passionately, and suggestively accompanied by moans and heavy breathing. I listened for the slightest hint of it being a joke of some kind or a test on her end. I let her speak, staying alert, and cautious. I could have slammed down the phone and let it go, but it was too bizarre, and I too curious. Finally, after telling me a lot of intimate details about herself and what we should do, she bid me a good night promising she’d call again. I neither encouraged, nor dissuaded her. I never heard from her again, nor expected to. But I was intrigued all the same. Legit or not, that call somehow linked us as she shared personal things that one only shares with one intimately close. Sometimes I still wonder about her.
The Call That Changed My Life
This was also the phone which woke me up on that fateful day in July 1988 in which my dad informed me of the untimely passing away of my mother. He had to repeatedly call long distance to so many people, he ended up getting blisters on his dialing finger. It was this incident that forced my seriously conservative dad to finally switch to a digital push button model. By this time, homeowners could purchase any phone of their choice independent of the service provider. It was a “Siemens” model that resembled this one:
Source: Philips
If it hadn’t been for the blisters, I suspect, my dad would never have upgraded.
The Nineties
My Longest Call
Then there’s my personal record for the longest phone call: five hours! When I was doing my Masters, this girl sat next to me when she arrived late for class. We struck up a friendship and she turned out to be really chatty outside of class. One evening, she called around 9PM. For some reason her talkative nature brought me out of my shell. I have no idea what we talked about for so long, but must have said “good night” repeatedly, only to revert back into another long conversation. The movie “The Last Emperor” came on TV while we were talking. It finished and then started again for a repeat showing by the time I hung up. I was shocked as I saw the clock showing around 2AM. I still can’t believe how that happened.
Another New Phone
The phone I used during this marathon call from my bedroom/work desk looked like the one below. This was a little over the top for my apartment, but I couldn’t resist the features some of which I would never use including stored numbers (a button for each number as it had no display), flash, call waiting, transfer, speakerphone etc., and its ability to be wall-mounted. Phones were turning into small computers by then.
Source: 1stopretroshop.com
All this time, I already had a phone in the kitchen wall that resembled the one below left, which we later replaced with the digital push button one on the right. Both these, especially the rotary one, had phone cords that were so extraordinarily long they enable you to walk around the kitchen annoyingly tangling others while you were totally engrossed in your conversation!
Source: Liketotally80s.com
Source: Quora
Bizarre Experience
Another bizarre incident was when our phone died. It would ring, we would pick it up – nothing. It would ring again, and again – but there was no sound when you picked it up. When I called from my office, my dad would pick it up, say “hello” repeatedly and hang up as he couldn’t hear me speaking from my end. It felt like something right of “The Twilight Zone” and was very frustrating and creepy to say the least. I’ve never experienced that again and would prefer not to either.
Meanwhile, with the further sophistication of the telephone, the FAX, answering machine, and voice mail evolved and entered our daily lives. Outdated, and taken for granted these days, these were major developments at the time.
The 2000s
Fast forward to the 2000s and the cellphone (not the smartphone). While everyone wanted and bought one, I held out. The only reason I felt the need for one was to call help in case of car trouble. A guy was updating his phone and getting rid of his old Nokia. He gave it to me for free as I literally caught it mid-flight as it was being “tossed into the garbage”. That was when I joined the cellphone club. I believe it was in 2002. I’ve since upgraded to two successive clam shell types and no further as I find no need for the “smartphone.” Jumping from the second to the third phone (from left to right) may look like nothing, but it was for me. Along with a slightly larger size screen, buttons, better sound, it has the almighty Bluetooth! Wow how revolutionary is that!
Source (L to R): NOKIA, BestProducts.com, Letgo.com
Enter the Smartphone
My family use their smartphones happily, but I’m doing fine without it.
Incidentally, I never gave up on the ‘landline’ and maintain one to this day. The smartphone has, however, levelled the playing field of sorts. Some parts of world, where landlines never reached the remotest corners are now covered by cellphone services. In fact, I’m impressed at how people in these rural areas have harnessed this technology for their everyday tasks including farming, administration, logistics, and of course communication, and entertainment.
Strangely, at the time of development, no one foresaw how attached we would become to the smartphone. I have no idea why people have one stuck in their ear all the time. Or why they need to drive, cross the road, or into other dangerous situations while engrossed in it? What were they doing prior to its development?
And the Resultant Cultural Shift
I think the current device has altered the art of social conversation as we’ve known forever. We’ve become slaves addicted to technology that was supposed to make life easier for us. I’m not sure if this is due to overly brilliant marketing or human nature. Maybe a little of both.
Source: Getty Images
The 2010s and Beyond
The telephone has evolved into a tool way beyond the communication device it was meant to be. I’ll be a little bold and predict where the phones of the future may go. The aim of the telephone was to bring us closer to each other over the distances but has evolved into a multifaceted tool. We’ve gone so far as to video chat over these devices. How about having a life-sized version of yourself projected, rather recreated, and vice versa during a telephone conversation?
Someone is already working on a “holoportation booth” that could be used to project and receive life-sized version of yourself. It’s right out of a sci-fi movie – but isn’t that where all these ideas originate?
Meanwhile, Personally Speaking
Personally, I avoid watching videos on the tiny smartphone screen and love my landline. I marvel at the basic AT&T phone design of the 80s, robust nature of the US payphone, and incredible variety of the decorative vintage phones of the 80s and 90s.
Source: Frugalsos.com
YouTube / commercials818
In Closing
It’s amazing how the telephone has evolved into another extension of ourselves. Not just from a utilitarian point of view, but also our popular culture. So well integrated has it become with our lives, we take it for granted. Today’s younger generation have missed out on a wonderful era of the fun phones when it was still a novelty of sorts. But I guess they would disagree with me and moreover fun for them has a different definition as the device they use today becomes more powerful and sophisticated by the day. I would love to see what Alexander Graham Bell would do if confronted by the device we use today and the culture associated with it. Something tells me he would be more impressed than a “fuddy duddy” like me.
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