While waiting for a doctors appointment I read a blurb in some magazine that back in the 1940’s-ish (?) when phone calls were handled by switchboard operators, one woman in either St. Louis or Kansas City referred all calls asking for the number of an undertaker to her husbands/family business, who was an undertaker.
Another undertaker noting a decline in his business figured out ( how he did, I don’t know, the article did not say) what was going on and decided to invent a phone that did not need a switchboard operator. He invented the push button phone.
The article was really short and did not go into great detail and I don’t remember the magazine, but I want the rest of the story. Didn’t/wouldn’t rotary phones have sufficed in bypassing such an monopoly like what that switchboard operator was doing?
The early bird gets the worm but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.
I’m sure you are right.
The purpose of the rotary phone was output pulses so that electronics could decipher the number being dialed. The operator was only there if the phone system didn’t have the electronic switching or for calls that need operator assistance.
Before the rotary phone, the off-hook switch alerted the operator and you were asked “number, please?”.
The push button phone came later in the game and I’m still charge extra for that service, though I don’t know why. When was the last time you used a rotary phone and can you even buy one any more?
I’ll dig up some links of when these things were invented and put into use.
The phone company stopped charging extra for touch tone service several years ago.
Pulse dialing was around long before tone dialing, though I don’t know if the undertaker story is true. The phone company preferred pulse dialing over an operator because it cost them less and didn’t have any staffing problems. By the 1950s, operators for local calls were pretty much a thing of the past (though when I was growing up, a neighboring community still had live operators).
Touch tone came into existance in the late 60s. We did a version of Bye Bye Birdie about 1967 with touch tone phones leant to use by NY Telephone. We wondered why they had the # and * keys. But few people had touch tone phones in those days.
When I got my own first phone in 1974, you had an option to use touch tone at the extra cost. The extra cost remained until the late 80s.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
The story is close. The way I heard it, he invented not push/tone, but the concept of a “switch”. A switch is a device for automating the switching/connecting of phone lines without having a human operator. Before his invention, all calls had to be manually connected by a human. The machine he invented likely was pulse, or something even more primitive.
I work in the telephony business, and I’ve heard the story a couple times. All word of mouth though, so it could have evolved a good ways from the truth by the time it trickled down to me.
I found this history of telephones that had the story in it.
It happened around 1890 and he invented the switch which allowed dial phones and automatic switching.
The first touch tone service wasn’t until 1963, although the systems were worked on for quite a while before that.
And, RC: my latest phone bill that I just opened has a itemized charge of $1.50 for touch tone service.
JimB: And, RC: my latest phone bill that I just opened has a itemized charge of $1.50 for touch tone service.
When I lived in western Colorado, we had that surcharge too. But it’s not on my Alexandria, VA bill.
I wouldn’t mind having that charge. At least I know what that charge means. On my latest bill, I have the following gobbledegook charges:[ul][li]Wire maintnance service not regulated by State Corporation Commission: $7[/li][li]Federal Subscriber Line Charge: $3.50[/li][li]Local Number Portability Surcharge: $0.23[/li][li]Virginia Relay Center Surcharge: $0.16[/li][li]Public Rights-of-Way Use Fee: $0.50[/ul][/li]
Now, what exactly do all of those mean?
AWB, the local number portability surcharge is for the convenience of not having to change your telephone number if you you move to the other side of town. My local phone company says that this charge will be a temporary one until they have generated enough revenue to cover their expenses for providing the service for a while.
When I was a younger pup, specifically in the '70s when the big conversion from analog switching to digital routing was taking place in the phone biz, the phone companies I dealt with – GTE and Ohio Bell, mostly – had this gigantic scam going. (Just keep in mind that you got this from me. They’re not gonna fess up.)
When you signed up for a new service, either in person or over the phone, the sales rep would ask you if you wanted ‘touch-tone’ service. Many folks in those days didn’t know what ‘touch-tone’ meant, and the rep would grasp that opportunity to ask the BIG QUESTION: “Does your phone have a dial or push-buttons?” If you answered “push-buttons,” the deal was done, and on to the next question. You had just signed up for the extra-cost ‘tone’ service, whether you needed or could use it, or not.
What many folks didn’t understand then is that the presence of buttons on your phone had nothing to do with whether it was a ‘pulse’ or ‘tone’ phone. MILLIONS of early push-button phones were not capable of ‘tone’ dialing. These phones simply electronically translated your button-push into the old pulse signals that had been in use for decades. For all the phone company’s switchboard knew, you were twirling an old dialer.
Due to my job, I moved around a lot back then, and I had the pleasure of establishing a new phone service on many occasions. EVERY TIME, the sales rep asked the same question: “Buttons or no buttons?” Since the phones I owned were not tone-capable anyway, I just said, “Gimme the pulse. And can I get fries with that?”
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
Dump the wire service agreement! $7/mo? Sheesh! Wire service agreements are one of the biggest scams the phone companies have going. It covers wiring INSIDE your house. Indoor wiring problems are almost unheard of. Most of the nasty stuff happens outside. I’ve never had inside wiring problems, and have never heard of anyone else who has
My folks have indoor telephone wiring problems frequently. Not sure why, but they live in an old house and have also had such pleasures as raccoons in the attic. For most people, though, the service agreements seem to be a waste of money.
I was being charged for touch-tone service in NYC for a year and a half before I noticed. Problem was, I had a rotary phone. (I was quite a Luddite then. Now I don’t know anybody’s phone number thanks to speed-dial). I called customer service to have the charge removed, they wanted proof-I stuck my finger in the ‘O’ hole and gave it a spin. She listened to the ratcheting sound and processed a credit.
When we first moved to this neighborhood, about 11 years ago, telco didn’t offer touch tone. They upgraded the switch later. There was no cable TV either.
Who’dathunk that someone would have written the history of telephones. What’s next? The history of aglets?