I used to think text messages were stupid and overpriced, and voice calls were superior. But once I had enough friends that I could text, I saw the light. Text messages use far less bandwidth and are able to be time shifted. Furthermore, unlike voice calls, you can save them. And unlike letters, they are instant or nearly so.
Think how many times you missed a call (or you placed a call that was busy or didn’t answer) pre-answering machine days. Now imagine you had an electric typewriter hooked up to the phone line like a teletype. Just dial the number, type your message, and don’t worry if they’re not home yet. They’ll get your message eventually. I know they had teletypes as far back as the 40s, so why didn’t the technology spread to the general public?
It seems to me there was a market for it, and the technology was there. People used Western Union regularly to send telegrams at least until the 1950s. Why didn’t Western Union try to compete with AT&T by installing teletypes in people’s homes, bypassing the need to visit a telegraph office, at least as early as the 1950s if not earlier?
There might not be a GQ answer for this question, but here’s my best shot:
I’m not so sure that the primary competition for this device would have been AT&T; I think it would have been the U.S. Postal Service. If it’s not urgent that the recipient get the message immediately, and if you don’t need to have a back-and-forth conversation, then why not just send a letter? Cross-town delivery would be the next day, for the low price of 10¢. Importantly, this has the advantage of not needing any new equipment installed in your home.
Once everyone owned a device that could receive such message incidentally, then this method of communication could take off. But I don’t think that people would want to buy a device that could only receive short messages.
Seems like the hardware needed in homes may have been prohibitively expensive and/or bulky. You need the hardware to be cheap to be ubiquitous, and ubiquitous to be worthwhile.
typed messages were far inferior to voice communication.
dedicated equipment for typed messages would be expensive.
ham radio people did do typed messages for both long distance and local messages. early it was by teletype. in the 70s packet radio was used these could be portable shoebox sized units. this couldd be used between two live operators or stored messages.
I grew up in the 70s and my big sister got an electric typewriter around '75 or so, and back then it is was utterly amazingly high-tech! We would fight over taking turns using (i.e. playing with) it.
And there was a foot of snow on it too! Damn kids today…
So I’m not home and I get a text message. Wouldn’t it be simpler and easier and cheaper for you to leave a message on my answering machine? Text messaging only makes sense from a cost-benefit perspective once we went mobile.
Damn you,** chacoguy**. I was going to mention fax machines as a technology that didn’t catch on for home use.
Teletypes were big machines you probably wouldn’t want to see in your house. Plus, they were slow – you’d be lucky to get 50 words per minute out of a teletype. Not to mention, they were expensive.
there was an experimental use of radio fax to the home in maybe the 30s. your broadcast AM radio receiver could get suplimental information to a radio show or breaking news.
Plus they suffered from Metcalfe’s Law - they would have been useless until nearly everyone had one. IM was useful when everyone had PCs, and texting was useful after everyone had mobile phones.