Dirt is slightly older than I but I remember party lines. My grandparents’ ring was two long rings and one short. The phone hung on the wall and had no dial. You picked it up and waited for the operator. Imagine the thrill when Mom got a radio linked call from my Dad who was in the Korean War. Thank you AT&T and some anonymous hero Ham operators who set up the link! Thanks!
We still had party lines in small town and rural Idaho when I was a kid in the late 70s and early 80s. People didn't have answering machines and so used to take phone messages for each other.
Great episode yet again, Santee! That little detail about ranchers using their already existing barbed wire fences as phone lines was brilliant. Many old west towns may only have had one telephone at first so folks would stand in line for hours or wait days to make a call.
We're not rapscallions ! We're the phone company...... Glad you got the slam in on texting there at the end. When I was a kid, our phone number on the rotary dial was "Diamond (DI) 30360.
My brother has worked as a lineman, then supervisor for Bell Telephone, then Verizon, for at least 50 years. He'd get a kick out of this episode! That telephone operator's attitude - 🤣!
Y’know, that’s gotta be the meanest-looking impression of Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine I’ve ever seen. Apart from that, great video, Santee! And thanks very much for the mention!
Have I reached the party to whom I am threatening? 'Cause we're the PHONE COMPANY!!! BTW, that switchboard was the same make and model used by Lily Tomlin on LAUGH IN; a 1933 Western Electric 555 PBX board.
In 1986 I was working for “the phone company” and was sent to southwest Missouri below Springfield. I had heard all the stories about how farmers and ranchers ran their own wire and connected to the company facilities at a common spot. This area, while no longer used customer provided transmission wire had not increased much. I know there were a few cedar posts that were pushing seventy years and still had open wire. I enjoyed very much actually working on what I considered history. Few people in the company actually got to work on and experience an area that close to a hundred years of telephone technology in one location. I love history and I loved working in that area.
We've been trying to reach you about your wagons extended warranty!!! Cool video Santee! I like when I can associate a face with a name too. Fun stuff, ain't it Jersey Red!
I learned a lot from my part in the episode Richard. After seeing it on RU-vid I know what I need to change. Thanks FYI....that was bourbon in my glass.....and not the first or second
Growing up in the 50's and 60's we had a party line, that was no fun. Our ring was 3 shorts. I worked at a small motel in the 60's it had a switch board, I had to connect all the in coming and out going calls from the rooms.
Hilarious video. I didn’t know about fence lines being phone lines. (At some point in here I expected to see a movie clip of James Coburn blasting apart a wall phone with a 45 automatic. (Last of the Hardmen)
This channel does it all. It entertains, it informs, it includes an amazing variety of pictures, and video clips with sound. BRAVO I love the pace. 👏🤠👏🤠👏🤠👏
Funny that you mention old firefighter masks. I was at an antique sale today and a guy there was selling one from 1878 for the low price of 5 grand. That was what my car cost lol. Pretty sure he didn't sell it, but still a beautiful piece of history.
The Lyceum is still standing. It was a favorite watering hole for myself and friends. Lovely Pub and the restaurant served excellent food. The Lyceum is proud of it's telephone history.
Some people might want to to dial down with the puns, but I say you made the right call every time. Edit; My granmother used work like that guy in 3:07. IF I remember it right she once said: "The things you could hear people tell eachothers."
And the puns start rolling before we even get started! Correct usage of a 'candlestick' phone demands you pick up the phone with your right hand and simultaneously flip the 'earpiece' up into the air and catch it in your left hand. Probably not somethin' you want to try with a borrowed antique, though...
Interesting that you showed the British red telephone box. Here ours in Kingston upon Hull were always cream coloured because we were not part of the same system.
My Aunt spent her entire career as a telephone operator for Ma Bell. They tried to promote her several times to management, but she refused. She absolutely loved being in the central distribution center of all the gossip in town !! That room full of women listened in on all the juicy calls and knew everything about everything going on :)
Great episode. Being a child (employee) of MA BELL, I took interest. I did work on those phones that you stuck your fingers in to spin the wheel. Before that, I worked on a cord board just like your operator.
Some hotels had house phones with no dial, so they could transfer calls to anyone in the lobby and not worry about them making expensive calls. What they didn't know was that you could bounce the hook (those two pegs the receiver "hung up" on) and make calls anyway. PO-65000 was 7 bounces, pause, 6 bounces, pause, 6 bounces, pause, 5 bounces, 10 bounces and a pause three times. It was fairly lax in the timing, so you could get good at with just a couple of calls.
My dad came across one of those old desktop models back in the ‘60s and turned it into a project. He turned the bell shaped mouthpiece straight up and put a light socket in it. Wired the rest of the body so that it plugged into the wall and you would take the ear piece off and set it on the table to turn the light on and hang it back up to turn the lamp off. He is an electrician and used to wire anything he could to pass the time. Yeah, he would wire the springs in old thinly upholstered chairs and you can imagine the outcome when people plopped down on them just dead ass tired from the day’s chores. We used to have a party line we shared with two other houses up the old dirt road you took to get to the highway. No special ring pattern - you just listened and asked if anyone else was there before dialing out.
My mother grew up in Brooklyn, New York in the 1930s. There was one phone in the neighbourhood at the corner candy store. The candy store guy would send a kid to your building and yell that you had a call. In southwestern Massachusetts in the early 1970s we had a party line that people could listen in or interrupt you if they wanted to use the phone.
I had one of the first "on-line" affairs with an Operator in Norfolk,VA 1972-73, I'd call home every Friday from the Ship, and, she and I would talk a date before connecting with Home, never saw each other, but, had a great verbal relationship, wonder what happened to her??
That switchboard you see in the video was used in Downtown Los Angeles years ago, but recently enough that one of the lines is labeled for the Arco Towers downtown.
He did not get a patent for it in 1849. He got a patent caveat, which is just an official notice of intention to file a patent application at a future date. That's why Bell was the victor.
I worked at Southwestern Bell SBC after the national deregulation of AT&T. They indeed are STILL quite a powerful company. They are STILL The Phone Company!
@@jerseyred9554 Jesse could never break AT&T....I know where the wire center is, but they don't have a local payment office for landline service. Hahahahaha. They're way too big.
Hi Santee ! My maternal grandparents' phone was a party line. As a kid visiting their home in a little country town I remember picking up the telephone receiver and hearing people casually chatting on the line. Although I did not know it at the time, the party line was probably the town gossips dream come true! Lol! Thanks for another great video!😃
We still had a wall-mounted phone when I was a boy. Our phone number was 4 Green and our ring was four short rings. There were 16 parties on the Green line. And I can remember barbed wire phone lines in Osage County, KS in the 1950s.
Great video, Santee! And I loved the references to two of my all-time favorite TV shows, Bonanza and Deadwood! I recognized the one clip was from the Deadwood Movie. And in at least one of the Bonanza sequel films, they had a telephone at the Ponderosa! In Tombstone, starting in 1882, the only telephone lines ran between the mines and the mills. Service with the outside world came a little later.
Wow that was great was learning laughing from the start, spilling coffee at the "I don't care" part. Enjoyed every entertaining second of it Santee. Gonna watch it again thank you Guys!
You've done it again Santee! I did not know that barbwire was used as phone line, but makes sense, that is amazing and shows just how things got done on the frontier. And since Bill beat you up I won't even make a bad joke this week, 'sides I think you beat me to all the best ones. Thanks again for making Saturday the best day of the week.
Whatever you're smokin' Santee....I WANT some!!! Great edition! Also, early on, mining companies would fun phone lines from their offices to the mines.
Board room scene from the classic movie, "Head Office". The CEO, played by Eddie Albert, reviews delinquent phone bills and decides if they should be disconnected
Folks tend to thin of telephones as modern and ubiquitous but growing up in rural western NC in the 70's there were still some people that didn't have a phone or TV.
Another excellent and funny video Santee!!! Back when I was doing my research, they used locomotive tracks to communicate through the distances, and the use technology for the telephone weren't mentioned. I can only assume the infrastructure took over a decade to install before it became useful outside government use only. Although, telephone use was very limited, it wasn't very practical until the switchboard operator was invented as well as "buying a telephone number" to be put through, therefore only the upper-class had access to it, until more practical solutions was found. Transmission of a telegraph signal didn't follow the curve of the planet, therefore it was necessary for relay stations to be set up, always it was interesting video.
Thank you! It was definitely in its infancy, but Deadwood had the first telephone exchange in 1878 so it wasn't just government used. Miners were using it, businessmen as well. You could make a phone call there for fifty cents. Same with Arizona, and California (probably other states as well).
I think that operator still was working in the 1980s yeah, I ran into a few of those who had the attitude that they could do what they want. Thanks for a great episode Santee
Those party lines were a real pain. You could always hear another phone being picked up. If no one said anything you knew they were just listening in on you. A few snide remarks usually got them to hang up. Operators were handy if you didn’t have a phone book handy. Of course if they didn’t connect you and just gave you the number ,you had to remember it. If you forgot you called the operator back. Was a dime on a pay phone when I was a kid. Jumped up to 2bits by the time I was a teen.
I still use an old phone of the 70ies with a round dial. My new iphone has a ringtone that whinnies like a horse. Customers of my shop ask always where the horse is...
I have a fascination with these phones I also have arthritis and I run generated electricity through my knuckles as an early tens unit and it relieves the pain in my hands great video brother thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise and for taking us on your adventure through time
@@ArizonaGhostriders not just that but I and my grandma and mom still talk with people on that phone because we love speaking in it and also whenever it has a damage
In the old West inspired novella series I’m writing, I’ll not only add the first telephones to my story but I’ll also be adding highly futuristic technologies and devices as well as devices from the retro era of the past.
If Bell saw all these people nowadays walking around with their noses in their phones he’d roll over in his grave. Can you imagine young people dealing with party lines?
