CBR14 BINGO: Series, because this book is part of the Ladybird “How it Works” series published in the 1970s.
I never pass a Little Free Library without checking out what’s on offer, and one day a few weeks ago I struck gold. Never has one person’s trash become such a treasure. Thanks to Ladybird Books, I was about to learn about how telephones work, or at least how they worked in 1972.
This book begins with some history of the telephone and why we need them. “In every aspect of our daily lives we need to communicate with one another. We do this mostly by speaking to other people and listening to what they have to say to us, and when we are close to them we can do this very easily. However, our voices will not travel very far, even when we shout.” The idea of people yelling across cities to each other without so much as a tin can and a piece of string makes me giggle, but I did learn something interesting from this introduction. It turns out that Elisha Gray tried to patent a telephone just a few hours after Alexander Graham Bell patented his. I’d never heard of Gray before, and while How It Works describes this event as a “coincidence,” one has to wonder if some chicanery was involved. Damn, were all these 19th-century inventors so back-stabby?
This comment brought to you by Thomas Edison.
This introduction out of the way, the book tells its young readers how modern telephones work, starting with a picture of a modern phone:
Well, they got the avocado green right!
Hang on a second, I grew up in the 70s and I never saw such a ridiculous looking phone! Young people today are going to think that we had no taste in the 70s or something.
Fine.
Ok, point taken, but everybody knows there was one iconic phone in the 1970s that every little girl dreamed about.
Princess phone, how I coveted thee.
According to How It Works, there were, at the time of publication, 270 million telephones installed throughout the world! According to statista.com, there were 884 million land-line subscriptions in the world in 2021, down from a peak of 1.25 billion in the early aughts. That doesn’t even account for the 7.1 billion mobile phone users. This Bell Gray guy was on to something!
The book goes on to explain how modern telephones work, which in the 1970s involved carbon granules and diaphragms, and picking up something called a “receiver.”
Gen Z: “What the hell is that?” Me: “Come on, surely you’ve seen one of these at the office.” Gen Z: “Office?”
How It Works also talks about the magical time of switchboards, when lady operators would plug cords into big boards to make connections between callers. Yes, they were ladies. The text very specifically says, “By plugging a cord into your line the operator can speak to you and you can tell her the number you wish to call.” Generic he, my ass!
But switchboard plugs are so old fashioned. Modern, auto-manual switchboards, which are operated by switches instead of cords and plugs, are known as cordless switchboards. “Someday,” the writer says wistfully, “all exchanges will work on the automatic principle.”
I should note that this series was published in the U.K., so it’s sprinkled with terms that may be less familiar but more delightful to American audiences–terms like “trunk calls” and “public services.” It also talks about the future of the telephone: “There is one kind of telephone we have not yet mentioned, that is, the Videophone. This is rather a special sort of instrument, still in the process of development, but it could well be the normal system in years to come.”
I love that the video phone still uses a rotary dial!
Perhaps my favorite part of this book is the advice on the back page about speaking into a telephone. “Speak naturally but clearly, with the mouthpiece near your mouth and not hanging somewhere under your chin. Do not speak too quickly and avoid the temptation to shout. . . .Try to get your meaning and feelings across by carefully choosing your words and your tone–you cannot make use of hand or arm signals when talking on the telephone.”
Probably texts in all caps, too
This book is a delightful look into the past: where telecommunications began and where we thought it was going in 1972. I’m so pleased, I can’t wait to pick up the sequel:
Can’t wait to learn about the new-fangled punch cards!
