Talk of the Town
Next year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the first-ever telephone call, between inventor Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Watson. Bell, who had patented the telephone just three days earlier, famously spoke the words: “Mr Watson, come here—I want to see you.”
The invention of a device that lets you speak to someone on the other side of the world surely ranks among the greatest of all time. If your head’s spinning at the pace of today’s technological change, you’re not alone. But I take comfort in the fact that younglings born this century will likely never know, and certainly never experience, the wonder that new technology like the telephone once brought to our homes. These days, every new breakthrough becomes same-old in a nanosecond.
At the nursing home where I work, I recently interviewed Jack, a lovely resident in his nineties whose memory is still razor-sharp. He recalled moving with his family in 1938 to the schoolhouse in Mimosa, a tiny township halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, where his father was the only teacher. Jack described his astonishment at discovering a telephone in the schoolhouse—the first he’d ever seen, and the only one in town. Not long after the move, the phone rang one night. It was the Junee Station Master, asking Jack’s dad to walk over and tell the Mimosa Station Master to change the signals for the interstate train.
The arrival of the telephone also created one of the earliest female-centric careers: the telephonist. In Queensland, statewide exams were held for all female applicants on spelling, handwriting, maths and diction. Job ads sought candidates with an equable temperament and a pleasant speaking voice, along with good health, sharp hearing, and a strong memory: qualities that, the ads claimed, might also appeal to unattached bachelors.
Other telephonic diamonds lost forever except in our collective memories include:
The curly-wired handset with a number dial that lived on the hall table (or even in the living room), so the whole family could listen in to every call.
Siblings dragging the handset into the next room, wedging the curly wire beneath the door.
Scheduling the family’s calls to avoid endless arguments over hogging the line.
Volcanic rage from (usually) Dad when the phone bill arrived. I once worked in a corporate office where a list of the top ten phone users was circulated to rein in expenses. (It didn’t work—making the list became a bit of a badge of honour.)
Memorising phone numbers. I still remember my best friend’s number and STD code from the 1980s.
Late-night calls, which always signalled bad news.
Crossed lines. I once eavesdropped on an entire argument between a recalcitrant guy and his hysterical/weepy girlfriend when I was about twelve: an experience that came full circle decades later when my phone Bluetooth-connected to an unknown number through my car.
Party lines, shared by multiple subscribers in rural areas, offering cheaper calls but zero privacy. Everyone relied on a vague etiquette system not to listen in, which no one ever followed.
Whoever was closest to the phone answering it.
That same person not asking who was calling.
The called party not hearing their name being yelled (usually by a sibling), so the receiver sat off the hook for hours until Mum or Dad eventually noticed and hung it up.
Lurking near the local payphone when you’d given out the number and were waiting for a call.
Stockpiling coins and feeding them into a payphone during high-stakes calls like job interviews.
Wrong numbers. I once rang my sister’s number and her son Henry’s best friend Adam answered. After we chatted, I asked to speak to my sister.
“Um—she’s not here,” he said, confused.
“Okay, is Henry there?”
“No. He doesn’t live here.”
Turned out I’d misdialled, and somehow connected to Adam’s house. What are the odds?
Of course, younglings don’t believe anything remotely technological existed before their time. My husband and I met while backpacking in Greece in 1990—he was from Sydney, I was from London. Fifteen months passed before I arrived here and decided to look him up for old time’s sake. I recently recounted the story to a young friend, who blinked and asked, utterly confused, how we managed to reconnect “back then.”
“On the phone,” I said.
Her brow furrowed, until finally the penny dropped. “Oh, the landline!!”
Yes, the good old landline. Still going strong. My children will forever be grateful to Bell and Watson.