I realized how much phones have changed when I found out my
granddaughter didn’t know how to unplug a phone jack. She didn’t even
know what one was! Phones have always been wireless for her.
When I
was a kid back in the 60s, the telephone company had to come to your
house to set up a phone. The man brought the phone for you and even put a
little tab with your phone number right in the middle of the rotary
dial. Current phones don't even have a spot for this.
- Standard issue rotary dial telephone
Phones
weren’t available for purchase, either. You had to rent them. Basic
black was the standard. If you wanted something pretty (like this pretty
pink princess phone) or a wall phone, you had to pay an extra charge
every month.
- Pretty in pink 'Princess' phone
When
push button phones became available, there was an extra monthly charge
for that, too. And for each additional phone in the house. And for
having an unlisted phone number. And of course, for long distance phone
calls. Caller ID was a physical impossibility: there wasn't a place for one to show up!
Cordless phones didn’t come around until late 70s or early
80s. I can’t remember the exact year: I was too busy having babies. I do
remember Shasta dumped our first cordless phone into the toilet. That
would make it around 1983. Although the commode had clean water in it at
the time, the phone never rang true again…
The range on the first
generation of phones was short, just far enough to take a bathroom
break in the middle of a long conversation. I certainly don’t miss being
tethered to coiled phone cords that invariably tangled. A 20' cord soon
became a 3' mass of snarls.
Oh, and if your phone rang and an
operator was on the other end, it meant you had a long distance call
which were outrageously expensive. It took a long time to come around, but
direct dialing and lower long distance rates were great
improvements to the phone system.
The greatest, until the internet came around, was the fax line.
It
was the 70s when the company I worked for installed facsimile machines.
How wonderful, even if the name was a mouthful. Now truck drivers could
get oversize and weekend trip permits transmitted and printed out over
phone lines. Other uses were soon found for fax machines including
sending pictures or important documents from one office to another...or jokes.
Push button dialing was a great improvement, too. No more
dialing 9 to get an outside line, then waiting clickity-click-click for
the dial to return to its starting point so you could dial the second
number. It took forever to dial those seven digits plus nine. It was
even worse for long distance calls with the extra three for area code. And if
the number you were calling was busy, there was no such thing as a
redial button, option to leave a voice mail, or even an option to butt into a
conversation with call waiting.
Yes, life was so tough back then.
I,
and about a kazillion others, celebrated the arrival of cell phones.
The first ones were outrageously expensive to buy outright. And then
there were the program options. It cost 45 cents a minute unless you
bought a plan. That dropped it down to 35 cents/minute. If you went over your minutes, you paid 45 cents a minute for overage.
No refund if you didn’t use all your talk time, either. Rollover
minutes hadn’t been created yet.
Don't get me started on texting!
There were no alphabet keyboards on the early cell phones. Punch the
number 2 to get to the letter C, wait for it to show up, then push 3
twice to get to E. You get the idea or not. I didn’t text until actual
keyboards, hard key or virtual, came out. There was an extra price for
each message sent or received, too. Some phone plans still have that,
but those per text charges seem to be disappearing, too.
Phones will continue to be a part of our lives, I'm sure. Just be happy that what we have now has come so far.
Naked in the Winter Wind
And
to see how a solar-powered smartphone saved the day in 1781, read about
Evie in Naked in the Winter Wind, first in the time travel series The
Fairies Saga.
Amazon NITWW
Nook NITWW
www.danihaviland.com
