Telephones in the 1940s

Direct-dial came later. I found this website with good information about the history of direct-dial long distance phone calls in the U.S.

http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/51trans.html

We didn't have a rotary dial phone until the 1950's (out in the country). I learned to use the large, wall mount phones with the crank to make long and short rings. If we wanted to call anyone outside our "party" line, we had to ring the operator in the little town nearby and have her put the call through. Same for long distance calls. By party line, I mean up to ten families on one phone line so if you picked up the phone to make a call there was frequently already someone on it and you had to wait your turn. This was also true after the rotary phones came in.

All the phone lines were aerial, suspended from poles like electric lines, but the phone cables weren't as strong so a tree branch landing on a phone line during a storm usually put the phone service out. Phone service back then was very interruptible.

Also, after the rotary phones came in, most phone numbers were alpha-numeric (at least here in the states) - like Belmont 9, 7406. What you dialed was BE9-7406. I can't remember when direct dial long distance (or extended area service) calling came in. We were still calling the operator to make a long distance call in the 60's when I was in college.

For international calls, check to find out when cables were laid (undersea) between Japan and the Philippines. And don't forget, a lot of military communications were made by short wave radio.

Hope that helps. Puma

I have here in my office an original candlestick phone dated 1913. It has a dial, marked PAX in the center. That stood for the Pennsylvania Exchange, which was not in Pennsylvania. It was located under the Pennsylvania Station in New York City. The label has a really neat Art Deco design, which maybe makes it a decade or so younger than the rest of the phone. The thing worked when I bought it 23 years ago, but that many years of my kids playing with it and dropping it on the floor have rendered it useless except as a prop. I keep it right next to my replica of the Maltese Falcon.

It is a damned heavy instrument, weighing about five pounds, and does not contain an interior ringer. That was separate, installed at the wall jack.

I am nowhere near as old as this phone, but I am old enough to remember, vaguely, when letter exchanges were phased out in favor of numbered exchanges in the very early 60s. ZIP Codes were introduced not long after, IIRC. I don't recall making any long distance calls at that age.

What Puma said about shortwave radio.

There were a lot of shortwave/ham radio fans across the world, certainly that generation's version of Internet addicts and tech geeks.

This scene from a 1939 Andy Hardy movie drove home to me of how far we've come. The stuff you might find of interest is 1:30 seconds into the scene. You can see how things might have been done back in the day, and the kid mentions contacting a guy in Australia. THAT was cutting edge tech back then, worthy of respect!

Now, we'd use a cell phone or the Internet with a webcam and complain about the service.

Of course, some kids built their own radio sets. The ads in the backs of magazines weren't always about X-ray glasses and slapping on 50-lbs of he-man muscles using the Charles Atlas Method.



You might let yourself become addicted to old movies. They do leave a record about ordinary things like phones, stores, cars, roads, fashions, and tech. I find myself ignoring the plot and taking notes on the street backgrounds and such!

I recall my mom was on a party line in the 50s-60s with another person to save money, but she never could make or get calls because the gabby neighbor tied up the line or she'd want to chat with Mom, who was never interested in making friends. She finally bit the bullet and got a private line, Crestview 4-2900, or CR4-2900 as you'd see it on the thing in the middle of the rotary dialer, typed in pica by someone at the phone company, sometimes written in ink by hand.

I suppose the equivalent today are those phone party things of those TV ads where "ladies are always talk for free" and guys pay a dollar a minute or more. The ads always show hot chicks with time to waste on the phone. I rather expect the reality looks somewhat like my avatar.

The phones were totally controlled by the phone company. They installed the phones, owned them, and dictated where in a house to put the phone. Having more than one phone in a house was unheard of! Why would you need more than one phone? Well, that will cost you! Next thing you know they'll want a second bathroom!

Usually there would be a niche in the hall wall where the phone would be parked on a little shelf, with a second shelf under it for the phone book. Here's a 1920s "gossip bench" that the better houses had.

Forget moving to another room for a private chat. Our phone line was *just* long enough to reach the bathroom. You couldn't buy longer cords, you had to have a phone guy come in and install one for you. Get the checkbook ready, too.

As a pre-teen I recall putting the phone on the floor, the connecting line from the wall wasn't long, so the phone stood on end, and I stretched the receiver cord to my room. If I lay on the floor I could talk, but my parents could still listen in, dammit.

Wire-taps on phone lines were possible in the 30s. Herbert Hoover turned a blind eye to the Chicago branch of the FBI when it came to tapping Al Capone's lines. It was illegal, but Hoover wanted results.

And yes. Phones were HEAVY. They were good blunt force trauma weapons in some murder mysteries if you could lift one. No lightweight plastic, they used bakelite and steel.

Later models might have a ringer volume control, otherwise they were set to wake the whole house. I remember putting paper between the striker and the bell to mute things. If you wanted it off, you took the receiver off hook and waited for the buzzing to stop. In a Thin Man movie, Nick Charles stuffed it in a drawer.

Gillhoughly said:

Usually there would be a niche in the hall wall where the phone would be parked on a little shelf, with a second shelf under it for the phone book. Here's a 1920s "gossip bench" that the better houses had.

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Before my folks moved to their current house, they lived for thirty years in a tudor-style house built in 1927, with a working coal chute and a wall niche in the small hall between the living room, master bedroom and downstairs bathroom that was just the right size for a candlestick phone. I'd moved out long before buying mine, though.

And yes, old movies are the best source for such things and how they were used. I suggest spending a lot of time watching TCM. Period films occasionally get those things right, too.

While in the Air Force in the late 50's, when I called my folks from out of state, I would dial "0" and ask the local operator to connect me with the long distance operator, who would ask for the city and state being called. Then they dialed another operator in the area and that operator would dial my parent's number. If you knew the code for the city and state, you could eliminate one operator by giving that information to the long distance operator. At that time, you got a dial tone when you lifted the receiver.

The military has what they call MARS, which in the days of expensive long distance, served as a radio patch for phone calls from military members to call home without going through a long distance operator. However, that system was not allowed during WWII for security reasons. Any calls would have to go through the commercial phone company, which I believe would have been barred from connecting with a Japanese phone.

When we called long distance from a military phone, we had to go through the base operator to get an outside line, and very few base numbers were authorized to dial outside lines. The orderly room was the usual place to dial outside, and there we kept a phone log that had to be filled out whenever we called. If I remember correctly, there was a sign on the phone, or in the base phone book that said all calls were subject to monitoring by the military.

My brother, twelve years my senior, was a ham operator and spent many hours in his room tapping out Morse code messages. How well I remember - CQ, CQ, CQ. He was also a radio "freak" and built most of his equipment from scavenged parts. He "talked" a lot more on his radio than we ever did on the telephone! Puma

gwendy85 said:

As far as my research goes, rotary dials for phones were already available during the 1940s (my novel is WWII era). I might sound a bit stupid, but whenever a person picks up a phone at the time, was their a dial tone, or an operator on the other line? Was long distance calling from one country to another possible? (Japan-Philippines). And in military offices, does someone keep check of phone calls? I'm not sure about wiretapping technology back then, as well as the legalities of it.

Appreciate the input

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My paternal grandmother was a telephone operator from about 1914 until 1940, when the "Changeover" as she called it occured in our area. That was the change over to direct dial calls on a local basis and they let a number of the telephone operators go at that time. Direct long distance dialing came much, much later. Long distance calling even within the US was a big deal that required a series of operators to be on the line.

I also believe that direct dial came at different times to different areas.

My grandmother was a "party-line" operator until she had a family, so there were still operators on the line in some places until at least the early 50's.

SirOtter said:

I have here in my office an original candlestick phone dated 1913. It has a dial, marked PAX in the center. That stood for the Pennsylvania Exchange, which was not in Pennsylvania. It was located under the Pennsylvania Station in New York City.

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In Philadelphia, exchange names lasted until the late 70s. The free local calling areas were strange, so the names helped people remember what was considered long distance.

Inside the city, you could call anywhere in the city for free, as well as some exchanges on the border (like MOhawk, which was the southern end of the Main Line). But out in Plymouth Meeting, about ten miles out of town, you were five miles from Norristown, Ambler, and Montgomeryville, and each was a separate toll calling area.

Regarding the PEnnsylvania exchange (when you spell out an exchange name, the first two letters are capitalized because that's what you dial): the Hotel Pennsylvania, across the street from Penn Station, can still be reached at PEnnsylvania 6 - 5000, just like the Glenn Miller song. I think it's the oldest continuously owned business number in the world.

It is a damned heavy instrument, weighing about five pounds, and does not contain an interior ringer. That was separate, installed at the wall jack.

My house had an old phone when I moved in, probably from the 1950's. It weighs a ton. It does have its own ringer (oh technology), but the house has a ringer in the basement. Even when I turn off the phone, the line still rings. It is loud enough to hear even outside, but not loud enough to wake the baby. The house jack has three prongs and needed an adapter (you could hit someone with the receiver and then stab them with the jack).

Since copper line technology for telephones hasn't changed much, you can be sure that anyone can tap on to a line from the out side by climbing up the pole and listening in with standard telephone equipment. I'm sure the telephone man could be bribed.

Good luck!