Category Archives: Telephone history

1959 Auto Dialer

Sixty years ago this month, the January 1959 issue of Electronics Illustrated showed how to put together this convenient autodialer for a telephone. It was designed to be used with a burglar alarm or fire alarm, to place a call to a pre-designated number.

The heart of the unit was the lever which went over the phone. In case of alarm, a solenoid released to let the phone off the hook. Then, the same lever was used to dial the phone by pushing the hook buttons. This was driven by the wheel shown here, which rotated thanks to a phonograph motor.

A bell or buzzer would sound over the phone, alerting the owner to the alarm. The article did note that if the line was busy, the message would not go through.

Hugo Gernsback’s Vision of the Telephot, 1918

Shown here on the cover of Electrical Experimenter a hundred years ago this month, May 1918, is Hugo Gernsback‘s vision of Skype, or what he called “telephot, an apparatus attachable to our present telephone system so that when we speak to our distant friend, we may see his likeness not only as an immovable picture, but we will see his image exactly as we see our own image when looking into a mirror. In other words, the apparatus must faithfully follow every movement of our distant friend whether he is only five blocks away or one thousand miles. That such an invention is urgently required is needless to say. Everybody would wish to have such an instrument, and it is safe to say that such a device would revolutionize our present mode of living, just as much as the telephone revolutionized our former standard of living.”

Gernsback reported that inventors were working on the problem, but the main catch was what we would today call the bandwidth, since it had to be “possible to attach it to the present-day telephone lines,” which to him was a single wire and a ground return wire. “In most of the schemes offered by inventors heretofore, a plurality of wires was necessary; in some cases several thousand pairs of wires. No matter how well such an instrument might work, this alone would doom it to certain failure.”

Listening In On Enemy Trenches: 1918

This diagram appeared a hundred years ago this month in the May 1918 issue of Electrical Experimenter, and explains why users of field telephones in the trenches had to maintain security in their communications, even though there was no possibility that the line was tapped.

The diagram shows the Germans listening in on the Americans’ telephones, but it could just as easily be the other way around. By running a line parallel to the other side’s line, it was possible to pick up the conversation inductively. A powerful amplifier might be used, but in many cases, it was possible to listen in with an ordinary telephone receiver hooked to both ends of the line.

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies…

…grow up to be–er, I mean, suck on telephone cords.

As a public service announcement, we bring you this reminder, which originally appeared in Popular Science a hundred years ago this month, May 1918.

There was apparently at that time a veritable epidemic of babies sucking on phone cords. According to the magazine, a woman called the complaint office of the phone company to report a malfunction in her instrument. The phone company employee, who had apparently heard it all, immediately suggested that the customer check the cord of her phone to see if there was a dark and wet spot.

The customer confirmed that it was wet, and indignintaly replied, “baby was playing with the cord this morning and took it in her mouth, sucking at it for a while. Surely there can be no harm and that.”

The complaint clerk, according to the magazine, “had heard the same story many times,” callously told the woman to have the baby knock it off.

Insulation quality is probably better these days. But still, you shouldn’t let your baby suck on any kind of electrical cord. And if someone suggests otherwise, please don’t indignantly tell them that there’s nothing wrong with it.

1918 Train Dispatching

A century ago, with much of the labor force off to war, American industry turned to women to fill many jobs traditionally held by their male counterparts. Shown here is one of the hundreds of young women being trained to be train dispatchers. The article, in the April 1918 issue of Electrical Experimenter, pointed out that the job was exacting, and in the real world, mistakes could easily mean death or dismemberment. Therefore, the women were trained on the model railroad shown here, before being unleashed on the real rails. The dispatcher would set signals and switches, with the model trains responding.

1978 Telephone Ideas

Forty years ago this month, the March-April 1978 issue of Elementary Electronics carried a number of articles on ways to make your phone work for you. These involved both commercial products and homemade projects.

The magazine noted that Ma Bell’s iron grip on telephone equipment was just starting to loosen. It noted that in the recent past, it was forbidden do do as much as add a piece of felt to the bottom of the phone to keep it from scratching a table, or put a shoulder rest on the receiver. Still, it advised you to check with the phone company before using any accessories–and not to give your name or address when you called!

The phone company would install four-prong jacks (for a fee). If you had only one jack, you could use cube taps to plug in more than one device. Plugs with a built-in socket were also available, which allowed you to stack as many as needed into a single outlet.

One of the homemade projects shown in the magazine was the remote control shown hooked to the coffee pot in the picture. This device would be legal anywhere, since it had no direct connection to the phone line. But it allowed you to turn appliances on by remote control at no cost.

Instead of a connection to the phone, it simply contained a microphone which was placed near the phone, and it was operated (at no cost) by the phone’s bell. To turn the appliance on, you called yourself, let it ring two times, and then hung up. Then, you would call again between 20 and 40 seconds later and let it again ring twice. The appliance would turn on only with this exact sequence, thereby almost eliminating the risk of the coffee being turned on by a random caller.

Also shown was a loud external ringer to ensure that you never missed an important call.

Midwest Blizzard of 1949

Downtown Rapid City after the blizzard. Photo by the Rapid City Journal.

Downtown Rapid City. National Weather Service/Rapid City Journal.

As I write this, snow is once again forecast for my region. Since the calendar says that it’s the first day of spring, it’s likely that the snow will be little more than a temporary inconvenience.

But I was recently reminded that a snowstorm wasn’t always just a minor inconvenience, and I learned about one of the Midwest’s largest winter storms ever, the blizzard of January 2-5, 1949.

Ida McNeil, KGFX.

I don’t think I had ever heard about this storm until I had a comment on my post about KGFX, a one-woman broadcast station run out of the home of Ida McNeil in Pierre, SD. As I mentioned in the previous post, Mrs. McNeil did take commercial advertising, but she viewed the station mostly as a public service. And this is borne out from the story of the 1949 blizzard shared by reader Dwight Small:

I well remember her broadcasting during the blizzard of 1949. We were completely snowbound on the former Hugh Jaynes ranch 15 miles NNW of Pierre. She was our only window to the outside world for at least a couple of weeks. We had no electricity but the battery powered radio lasted sustained our spirits. We learned from her that there were hundreds of others in the same boat.

I did some research about the storm, and it appears that many were, indeed, in the same boat. The winter of 1948-49 was severe in many respects, but it delivered it’s biggest punch to the northern plains in the early days of January, 1949.

The April, 1949, issue of QST describes its entry to South Dakota:

Things began on the morning of January 3rd in South Dakota, when KOTA, Rapid City’s broadcaster, let loose with the first hint that the impending storm was to be of record-breaking proportions. Unfortunately many ranchers, traveling people and others failed to hear the broadcast warnings and were totally unprepared for what was to come. It started coming down on the 3rd, and continued until about noon on the 5th. The actual snowfall was not of record-breaking proportions, but high winds, sometimes in gusts of 65 to 70 miles per hour, piled the snow into mountainous drifts, oftentimes 30 to 50 feet deep.

Many others found themselves isolated by the storm. In 2013, the Rapid City Journal carried the reminiscence of schoolteacher Grace Roberts, who was stranded at her post in Creighton, a small town about 25 miles north of Wall. She and her four-year-old daughter made it to school, but then found themselves trapped there for 38 days. The road to the school was plowed a few times, but was quickly covered over with snow.

She reminisced in 2013 that she ate a lot of canned soup, but managed due to the kindness of neighbors, the closest of whom was a mile away. The neighbor would ride over on horseback, “and when his wife baked bread he’d bring us some bread or when he milked a cow, he would bring some milk.”

The school had a small bed, and was well stocked with coal. They also had a battery radio, and would listen occasionally, but mostly passed the time by talking and reading.

Another survivor, Everett Follette of Sturgis, like many South Dakotans, had a phone line that kept working through the storm and served as the lifeline. Interestingly, though, Follette recounted in 2009 that the family also had a battery-powered radio, “but the only station they could tune in came from Bismarck, N.D.”

Battery radio of the era, a Philco 41-841.

The family used as much milk and cream as they could from their dairy farm, but with roads impassible, they had to dump the excess. Eventually, the Sturgis creamery called about the availability of milk, and made a deal to follow a military snowblower. When neighbors learned that the truck was coming, they quickly phoned the grocery store in Sturgis to have groceries delivered.

As might be expected, hams sprang to action to deal with the communications needs of the region, as detailed in the April 1949 issue of QST. In South Dakota, when the snow first started coming down, W0ADJ and W0CZQ made arrangments with the Air Force base to maintain contact with the base at Colorado Springs, “just in case.” Hams also played a role in coordinating the massive air operations after the storm had passed. Planes were used to search for survivors and drop supplies for both humans and livestock.

Broadcast stations advised incommunicado ranchers of which marks to make in the snow to request drops of feed and other supplies.

The railroad plow which bored through on the North Western line from Pierre east of Rapid City after dynamite as used to loosen ice-encrusted snow. Photo courtesy of the Rapid City Journal.

One of the most dramatic uses of amateur radio took place in Ogallala, NE, a town of about 3000 in western Nebraska. A train was stalled in the snow west of town, and a major transcontinental highway was blocked. State snowplows managed to break through, and led a mile-long convoy of cars into town. Suddenly, the town of 3000 was pressed into service to shelter, feed, and supply communications for an additional 2000 people.

The communications duties fell upon W0LOD, the town’s only ham, whose station was limited to running 50 watts with a single 807, and only on 40 meters. Despite his modest station, “all around W0LOD–north, south, east and west–were hams with sensitive receivers, and perhaps greater power, and, as the skip ebbed and flowed he was able to sit at his operating position handling emergency traffic in unbelievable quantity much as he had been accustomed to handle routine traffic night after night. It was a 48-hour session at the key, but no heroics, no frantic ‘QRRR’–just a traffic man doing that which he likes best.”

The April 1949 QST article tells of other storms that winter, many of which overlapped each other. For example, when railroad telegraph lines went down, hams were called upon to assist the railroads in keeping te trains running. In Kansas, W0EQD didn’t even realize that his town had been cut off from the outside world. The power was out, so he got his station running on the emergency generator and checked into the Kansas Phone Net, which had traffic waiting for the phone company. As soon as he delivered the message and local officials found out he was on the air, he was kept busy for the next 48 hours as his town’s only communications facility.

Missouri was hard hit by an ice storm on January 11, and many commercial telegraph lines were down. Western Union called on hams to deliver both company and weather bureau messages. The cartoon below appeared in the Springfield (Mo.) News & Leader, and was reprinted in QST. It shows a ham being scoffed for spending so much time and money to take part in a “kid’s hobby” only to talk to people he didn’t even know. But in the next panel, after the ice hits, the same man is begging the ham to get news of his mother who was cut off from the outside world.

References

It’s ‘Going Down in History”: The Blizzards of 1949. South Dakota History Vol. 29, p. 263 (1999).

Albert E. Hayes, Jr., W1IIN, Deep Freeze, QST, Apr. 1949, p. 35.

1948 Speaker Phone

Today, most telephones, either landline or mobile, contain a speaker phone function, but this hasn’t always been the case. Shown here from 70 years ago is a very early version, the Jordaphone, shown here in the January 1948 issue of Popular Mechanics. The article notes that groups could now sit in on meetings without individual telephones with the instrument that “looks like a console radio.”

The article also stressed one important fact, that the Jordaphone “is not actually connected with the telephone line.” As those of us who grew up in the 1960’s and earlier are aware, the telephone line and “the instrument” were sacred, they were property of Ma Bell, and that tapping into the line was absolutely forbidden.

This device had a workaround. The telephone handset was set in a cradle in the top, and inductively coupled to the Jordaphone.

1957 Boys’ Life Telephone Circuit

Sixty years ago, Maurice Peacock, Jr., of Radnor, PA, got $5 for sending these simple circuits to the “Hobby Hows” editor of Boys’ Life, where they were printed in the November 1957 issue.

The circuit shows how to rig up a telephone system to a friend’s house nearby, using an old radio headphone. One earpiece is used at each end, with batteries wired in series. Peacock explains that the wire needs to be insulated, and suggests that old thread spools can be used as insulators. The basic circuit is shown in figure 1. To save on the cost of wire, a good ground can be used as the return, as shown in figure 2.

I suspect the Boy Scouts of 1957 eventually figured it out, but the diagrams shown here wouldn’t work. A minor change needs to be made.

I suspect that, just like the Boy Scouts of 1957, our readers will quickly spot the problem. When you’ve found it, please comment on our Facebook page.

1942 Army Signal Corps Recruiting

This recruiting ad for the U.S. Army Signal Corps appeared in Popular Mechanics 75 years ago this month, November 1942. It noted that this was a radio war, and that the nerve center of the army needed skilled hands. It suggested a number of opportunities to serve.

Physically fit men ages 18 to 45 were eligible for direct enlistment in the Signal Corps Enlisted Reserve. Those with experience as a licensed radio operator, a trained repairman, or active telephone or telegraph worker would qualify for active duty at once with pay of up to $138 per month, plus board, shelter, and uniforms.

Those without direct experience but “skilled with tools” would qualify for training and ordered to active duty after completing the course.

Degreed electrical engineers, as well as junior and seniors in EE programs, would be eligible for commission.

Young men over 16 having an ability with tools would be eligible for immediate training, with pay of not less than $1020 per year. Even those with a minor physical handicap could find a place to serve.

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