Chamber Chatter - Telephones Through the Ages

Published in the print edition of October 6, 2022

Chamber Chatter

Do you still have a landline? There was some interesting information on stasta.com the other day which included: “In 2004, more than 90 percent of U.S. adults lived in households that had an operational landline phone – now it’s less than 40 percent.”

Just think how incredible is it how much has changed over the last 100 years or so. How very spoiled we are in 2022! Take a look at this look at the view of landlines as compared to other marvels of THEIR time as viewed in the June 16, 1921 issue of The Marlow Review.

“TELEPHONE MORE IMPORTANT THAN ELECTRIC LIGHTS. SO DECLARES ‘A BUSINESS MAN’ in DISCUSSING WINDOW SIGNS ---- (By a Businessman) A sign in the window of an automobile agency in Oklahoma City, reads as follows: ‘If you had to abandon your electric light, telephone or automobile, which would it be?’”

“Here is a question worthy of consideration theoretical discussion involving as it does, a hypothetical reversal of the well-known wheels of progress. The discussion would have to be purely theoretical, of course, because nobody knows what he would do under these imaginary circumstances. But granting that such arbitrary choices were put to the people which of these three modern conveniences would the majority of people be likely to ‘abandon.’”

“Being an owner of automobile, as well as a user of electric light and telephone, I think I am qualified to cast my vote in advance. Of the three I would scratch my automobile. In doing so I do not want to be understood as underestimating the value of the motor car. To paraphrase Mark Antony, this is a case of ‘not that I love the automobile less, but that I love the electric light and telephone more.’”

“The only test is, of course, which loss would affect our everyday life the least. Well, I have had my car laid up for repairs, and while the temporary loss, this means inconvenience, it was nothing compared with the ‘blowing’ of an electric light fuse, or the inconvenience when a storm puts the ‘phone out of order.’”

“We do not, perhaps, realize that we are actually living in an age of miracles. It is a miracle to be able to propel oneself over the ground at railroad speed, but it is even a greater miracle to be able to flood a room with light, merely by pressing a button, or to be able to talk to one of a hundred thousand people within a few seconds merely by lifting the receiver from the hook!”

“The telephone and electric light cost us only a few cents a day; an automobile may cost the owner many dollars a day. The question of cost suggests the question of substitutes. If we can’t drive a car, we can always board a street car or a train. It is true also, that there are fairly good substitutes for the electric light. But there is no real substitute for the telephone. The telegraph transmits our message certainly; but the telephone transmits our voice; and it is at our instant command at any hour of the day or night.”

Can you even imagine what a time traveler from 1921 would think in this day and time?

“The vast majority of Americans – 97% -- now own a cellphone of some kind. The share of Americans that own a smartphone is now 85%, up, from 35% in Pew Research Center’s first survey of smartphone ownership conducted in 2011.” (pewresearch.org)

Now we have not only those electric lights, AND electric automobiles, but also magical picture phones that follow us everywhere! Jumpin' Jehosophat! Whatever will they think of next!?!