Here’s how the 99% invisible blog begins explaining telephone switching systems: If you are an undertaker in 1878 Kansas City, and you learn that your competitor’s wife works as a telephone switchboard operator and has been diverting business calls meant for you to her husband, you have three potential courses of action: (1) Contact the […]
Tag: telephone
How to telephone from every room in a residence
There is a way you can telephone from every room in a residence, explains the May 1905 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine: https://books.google.com/books?id=oN8DAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA491&pg=PA502#v=onepage&q&f=false
Phoning during a thunderstorm – Unrecommended
“Is it dangerous to make a landline phone call during a thunderstorm?” It can be. Background is provided by Emeritus Professor Mat Darveniza, AO, FTSE, BE, PhD, DEng, Hon DSc (Eng), FIEAust (Hon), FIEEE (life), FTSE, LIVA, from the University of Queensland Australia – who is a leading authority on lightning strikes. In Australia alone […]
How to dial a rotary telephone
This 1950 video instructs the public on how to dial a rotary telephone. Before many years had passed, most of the public became fully adept at dialing rotary telephone dials. Rotary dials eventually were replaced, almost entirely, with “touch tone” systems, in which one presses buttons rather than dialing a dial. Were rotary dials to […]
Inventions to detect and prevent annoying phone calls, documents, or people
Annoying phone calls and documents clog our telephone, email, and other communications networks. Inventors, and the institutions backing them, are trying to fight technology with technology. Here are three of their patent applications: “Detecting and rejecting annoying documents,” international patent application WO 2007070622 A3, Filed Dec 14, 2006 by Anurag Agarwal and Deepak Jindal (Google […]
Ig Nobel filmmaker tries to retrieve deleted email
Bahram Sadeghi documented his recent attempt to recover a deleted email message. Sadeghi telephoned the NSA (America’s National Security Agency). The NSA is known to record and store much of the world’s email traffic. He asked: “I understand you keep track of lots of e-mails and internet data, can you help me? The conversation continued from there: […]
The day engineers ceased to be boring (in Britain)
In August 1996, British civil engineers ceased to be officially boring. Glenda Browne, prompted by the appearance of the special Boring Machines issue the Annals of Improbable Research, alerts us to a report about that historic occasion. The AP wire service reported, in 1996: CIVIL ENGINEERS NO LONGER BORING — YELLOW PAGES SAYS SO DIRK BEVERIDGE , Associated Press […]
Switchboard operators and their pranks
This old video documentary by AT&T tells the early history of the telephone switchboard, and includes bits of colorful tale-telling, including some about the naughty behavior of some switchboard operators. Much of the documentary, though, is reassuringly, seriously dull:
Defending Pay Phones and Parking Spots
As pay telephones disappear from our cities, with them vanish opportunities to watch an entertaining, maddening form of behaviour. The behaviour was documented in a study called Waiting For a Phone: Intrusion on Callers Leads to Territorial Defence. The report came out in 1989, before mobile phones nudged public pay phones towards oblivion. Professor R Barry […]
Doggie-phone update
A little over a year has passed since the US patent for a Domestic Animal Telephone was issued. The patent describes : “A phone for pets and pet owners is taught [sic?] which allows the owner to call the house and ‘talk’ to the pet”. Now, (Feb 01, 2011) a new patent has been issued […]