Ahoy there, come on in, grab a comfy chair.
Do you like my nautical greeting? Actually,
I was trying to please the spirit of Alexander
Graham Bell who thought ‘ahoy’ or even
‘Ahoy-hoy; was the correct way to answer
the telephone. As he is credited with inventing
the thing, you’d think he got to choose
but Thomas Edison disagreed and suggested
‘Hello’ and for reasons I can’t establish
he won. Back in 1878 the very first phone
book ever published, by the District Telephone
Company of New Haven, Connecticut, told all
50 of its users to begin their conversations
with "a firm and cheery 'hulloa.'" Spelt hulloa.
I have no idea if the extra "a" was silent.
Anyway, hullo, hulloa or Ahoy! At the moment
my life entirely revolves around the wretched
phone. I record these talks on it, keep in
touch with my kids, play the odd game and
even look things up. I don’t really like
using it and went not filming conceal the
damn thing inside a cover which makes it look
like a book. Nevertheless, without my asking,
the wretched device told me this morning that
I am averaging six and a half hours of screen
time a day which seems absurd. Rather like
our political leaders, I am unaware of even
having cogent thought for that many hours
a day.
The phone was invented in 1876. It has taken
us 144 years to reach the stage where the
average Westerner spends a year of their life
on the device. The British I have to say were
reluctant users when it was first invented.
When it was first mooted here, the Post Office
chief engineer felt it would be of little
practical value. ‘The Americans have need
of the telephone – but we do not. We have
plenty of messenger boys.’
Actually, I like the idea of messenger boys.
How pleasing in these isolated time if some
some slight fellow in a pillbox hat would
turn up at the front door with a small scented
letter. I’d even like to go back to the
days when the bulk of phone communication
happened through an operator. Almost inevitably
female which reminded me that I have this.
This old phone was the kind my parent’s
had in their holiday home in the rural part
of Denmark where I hail from. It was exactly
like this because this one actually comes
from the inn up the road. There were nine
identical phones in the village, each given
a single digit phone number. I think we were
number five but the only number you needed
to know was 7 which was the inn. If Dad wasn’t
home or fishing, that’s where he’d be.
If you wanted to ring then you turned the
handle at the side and after a while, sometimes
quite a long while, the woman who also ran
the only shop would answer. You’d say ‘Number
7 please’ and she’d either tell you Dad
wasn’t there or put you through. She knew
absolutely everything about everyone because
she listened in on every call. You could hear
her breathing. If you wanted to speak to someone
in Copenhagen, well, then that might take
all day as you needed to book a line so hardly
anyone ever bothered.
This was the early 1960’s. There were no
mobile phones because phones of any kind weighed
a ton. My British grandparents had a rather
more modern phone with a dial and everything
but in those days the phone and its use was
considered an expensive item so the device
was placed with great care on a special shelf
in the hall. If anyone wanted to make a call
they could be reminded of the immense cost
by standing beside it next to the draught
from the front door.
The very first telephones had to be a physically
connected to each other by a wire. This became
a logistical nightmare and soon telephone
exchanges developed where connections were
made manually by what became known as "hello
girls." A call would come in and a woman sitting
at a complicated board of wires, lights and
sockets would connect them to the person they
were trying to reach. It’s was an important
part of women entering the workplace in the
first half of the nineteenth century. Initially,
in both Britain and America, switchboard operators
were male. It may surprise you to learn that
some of the boys were not best suited to the
job. They lacked patience, occasionally used
bad language and were not above fooling around
instead of getting people connected.
It was said to be Alexander Graham Bell himself
who came up with the solution. Why not be
radical and hire women to answer the phone
and put people through? He engaged a woman
named Emma Nutt who in 1878, became the world’s
first female telephone operator. In Britain
it was a woman called Bella Sinclair in the
Orkneys. On both sides of the Atlantic, it
was soon discovered that callers preferred
female operators. They were calmer and here
is the big plus point, cheaper. For a lot
of women the work was nicer than any kind
of manual labour. By the end of the 1880s,
the job had become an exclusively female occupation.
Not that the work was easy. Just to get the
job, a woman had to pass height, weight, and
arm length tests to make sure she could fit
in the tight quarters where operators were
expected to sit for eight hours a day in straight-backed
chairs for low pay.
Of course we don’t have such exchanges now.
They are computerised and that’s because
of Dr. Erna Schneider Hoover who was born
on June 19, 1926. Erna is an American mathematician
who affected our daily lives but whose name
may not reveberate with recognition the way
Alexander Graham Bell’s does. When she was
growing up the idea that a young woman might
make her way in the world of science was not
a popular one but she is said to have read
a biography of Marie Curie which encouraged
her on. In 1951 she earned her Ph.D from Yale
University in philosophy and the foundations
of mathematics and got a job at Bell Labs
which had been founded to research all aspects
related to the recording, and transmission
of sound. When Erna joined computer technology
was in it’s infancy.
Also in it’s infancy was Erna’s second
child. It was while recovering from childbirth
that she began pondering a then current communication
problem. Telephone exchanges had developed
and now electronic relays were doing the work
of the old operators. The problem was more
and more people had phones and sometimes a
call center would be inundated with thousands
of calls in a short amount of time. This would
overwhelm the electronic relays, and causing
the entire system to "freeze up." Erna saw
it as a logic problem and she came up with
a system whereby a computer could use data
about incoming calls to impose order on the
whole system. It was a new way of handling
calls and became known as stored program control.
I genuinely don’t understand but it was
so important that lawyers for Bell Labs handling
the patent went to her house while she was
still on maternity leave so that she could
sign the necessary papers.
Erna explained about her invention - Basically
it was designed to keep the machine from throwing
up its hands and going berserk.
This seems a marvellous female attitude and
the principles of her invention are what we
still use today. Erna revolutionized modern
communication and because or her we have all
been able to carry on chatting even while
everyone has been stuck at home. Studies of
the use of the phone have shown it does seem
to be used differently if you’re a boy or
a girl. Anecdotally many of us probably feel
that’s true. How many people have had the
experience of phoning home, Dad answers, you
say “How are you?” He says, “I’m fine,
do you want to talk to your mother?”
When the phone was first marketed it was seen
as a business tool for men to make deals and
promote their products and services. What
we now know is that it became a lifeline for
so many women, especially in isolated communities,
who were helped to sustain social relations
and even keep their sanity. I am grateful
to Erna and all the women who ever put a call
through.
Please don’t think I don’t keep up. This
is my latest phone. This is called a Light
phone. All it does is make and receive calls
which is just like the old phone but easier
to lose. Honestly, not everything is an improvement.
The 1878 phone book which recommended ‘Hulloa’
to begin a chat suggested one should finish
a conversation with the phrase, “That is
all." Before I go - If you can - ring someone
you have spoken to for awhile. You might save
their sanity. Or even better - send a messenger
boy. Take care. Be kind. "That is all."
Hey Deb, the old phone is ringing. Hello?
No! I have no recently been in an accident
which was not my fault. I’m very clumsy.
I think it’s always my fault. Weird.
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