simple reading question (250 words)

1) According to Fischer, how did early telephone companies view “social” conversation on their lines? What uses of the telephone did early telephone companies promote? Who was the intended user of this technology when it was first introduced?

2) What “cultural explanation” does Fischer offer to explain early assumptions about the telephone’s purpose?

3) According Marvin, how did telephones challenge traditional physical and social boundaries?

Technology and Culture, v. 29, no. 1 (January 1988), 32-61
“TouchSomeone”:The Telephone
IndustryDiscoversSociability
CLAUDE
S. FISCHER
The familiar refrain, “Reach out, reach out and touch someone,”
has been part of American Telephone and Telegraph’s (AT&T’s)
campaign urging use of the telephone for personal conversations.
Yet, the telephone industry did not always promote such sociability;
for decades it was more likely to discourage it. The industry’s “discovery” of sociability illustrates how structural and cultural constraints
interact with public demand to shape the diffusion of a technology.
While historians have corrected simplistic notions of “autonomous
technology” in showing how technologies are produced, we know
much less about how consumers use technologies. We too often
DR. FISCHER is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Some material presented here was initially delivered to the Social Science History Association, Washington, D.C., October 1983. The research was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (grant RO-20612), the National Science
Foundation (grant SES83-09301), the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Committee
on Research, University of California, Berkeley. Further work was conducted as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, with financial support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Archival
research was facilitated by the generous assistance of people in the telephone industry: at AT&T, Robert Lewis, Robert Garnet, and Mildred Ettlinger; at the San Francisco Pioneer Telephone Museum, Don Thrall, Ken Rolin, and Norm Hawker; at
the Museum of Independent Telephony, Peggy Chronister; at Pacific Bell, Robert
Deward; at Bell Canada Historical, Stephanie Sykes and Nina Bederian-Gardner; at Illinois Bell, Rita Lapka; John A. Fleckner at the National Museum of American History also provided assistance. Thanks to those interviewed for the project: Tom
Winburn, Stan Damkroger, George Hawk Hurst, C. Duncan Hutton, Fred Johnson,
Charles Morrish, and Frank Pamphilon. Several research assistants contributed to
the work: Melanie Archer, John Chan (who conducted the interviews), Steve Derne,
Keith Dierkx, Molly Haggard, Barbara Loomis, and Mary Waters. And several readers provided useful comments on prior versions, including Victoria Bonnell, Paul
Burstein, Glenn Carroll, Bernard Finn, Robert Garnet, Roland Marchand, Michael
Schudson, John Staudenmaier, S.J., Ann Swidler, Joel Tarr, Langdon Winner, and auditors of presentations. None of these colleagues, of course, is responsible for remaining errors.
? 1988 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.
0040-165X/88/2901-0002$0 1.00
32
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
33
take those uses (especially of consumer products) for granted, as if
they were straightforwardly derived from the nature of the technology or dictated by its creators.’
In the case of the telephone, the initial uses suggested by its promoters were determined by-in addition to technical and economic
cultural heritage: specifically, practical uses in
considerations-its
common with the telegraph. Subscribers nevertheless persisted in
using the telephone for “trivial gossip.” In the 1920s, the telephone
industry shifted from resisting to endorsing such sociability, responding, at least partly, to consumers’ insistent and innovative uses of
the technology for personal conversation. After summarizing telephone history to 1940, this article will describe the changes in the
uses that telephone promoters advertised and the changes in their attitudes toward sociability; it will then explore explanations for these
changes.2
‘See C. S. Fischer, “Studying Technology and Social Life,” pp. 284-301 in High Technology, Space, and Society: Emerging Trends, ed. M. Castells (Beverly Hills, Calif.,
1985). For a recent example of a study looking at consumers and sales, see M. Rose,
“Urban Environments and Technological Innovation: Energy Choices in Denver and
Kansas City, 1900-1940,” Technologyand Culture 25 (July 1984): 503-39.
2The primary sources used here include telephone and advertising industry journals; internal telephone company reports, correspondence, collections of advertisements, and other documents, primarily from AT&T and Pacific Telephone (PT&T);
privately published memoirs and corporate histories; government censuses, investigations, and research studies; and several interviews, conducted by John Chan, with retired telephone company employees who had worked in marketing. The archives
used most are the AT&T Historical Archives, New York (abbreviated hereafter as
AT&T ARCH), and the Pioneer Telephone Museum, San Francisco (SF PION MU),
with some material from the Museum of Independent Telephony, Abilene (MU
IND TEL); Bell Canada Historical, Montreal (BELL CAN HIST); Illinois Bell Information Center, Chicago (ILL BELL INFO); and the N. W. Ayer Collection of Advertisements and the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, National Museum of
American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. A bibliography on the
social history of the telephone is unusually short, especially in comparison with those
on later technologies such as the automobile and television. There are industrial and
corporate histories, but the consumer side is largely untouched. For some basic
sources, see J. W. Stehman, The Financial History of the American Telephoneand Telegraph Company(Boston, 1925); A. N. Holcombe, Public Ownershipof Telephoneson the
Continent of Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1911); H. B. MacMeal, The Story of Independent
Telephony(Chicago: Independent Pioneer Telephone Association, 1934); J. L. Walsh,
ConnecticutPioneersin Telephony(New Haven, Conn.: Morris F. Tyler Chapter of the Telephone Pioneers of America, 1950); J. Brooks, Telephone: The First Hundred Years
(New York, 1976); A. Hibbard, Hello-Goodbye:My Story of TelephonePioneering (Chiin Cancago, 1941); Robert Collins, A Voicefrom Afar: The History of Telecommunications
ada (Toronto, 1977); R. L. Mahon, “The Telephone in Chicago,” ILL BELL INFO,
MS, ca. 1955; J. C. Rippey, Goodbye,Central;Hello, World:A CentennialHistory of North-
34
Claude S. Fischer
A Brief History of the Telephone
Within about two years of A. G. Bell’s patent award in 1876,
there were roughly 10,000 Bell telephones in the United States and
fierce patent disputes over them, battles from which the Bell Company (later to be AT&T) emerged a victorious monopoly. Its local
franchisees’ subscriber lists grew rapidly and the number of telephones tripled between 1880 and 1884. Growth slowed during the
next several years, but the number of instruments totaled 266,000
by 1893.3 (See table 1.)
As long-distance communication, telephony quickly threatened telegraphy. Indeed, in settling its early patent battle with Western
Union, Bell gave financial concessions to Western Union as compensation for loss of business. As local communication, telephony quickly
overwhelmed nascent efforts to establish signaling exchange systems (except for stock tickers).
During Bell’s monopoly, before 1894, telephone service consisted
basically of an individual line for which a customer paid an annual
flat fee allowing unlimited calls within the exchange area. Fees varied widely, particularly by size of exchange. Bell rates dropped in
the mid-1890s, perhaps in anticipation of forthcoming competition.
In 1895, Bell’s average residential rate was $4.66 a month (13 percent of an average worker’s monthly wages). Rates remained high,
especially in the larger cities (the 1894 Manhattan rate for a twoparty line was $10.41 a month).4
On expiration of the original patents in 1893-94, thousands of
new telephone vendors, ranging from commercial operations to
westernBell (Omaha, Nebr.: Northwestern Bell, 1975); G. W. Brock, The Telecommunications Industry: The Dynamicsof Market Structure(Cambridge, Mass, 1981); I. de S. Pool,
Forecasting the Telephone (Norwood, NJ., 1983); R. W. Garnet, The TelephoneEnterprise: The Evolution of the Bell System’sHorizontal Structure, 1876-1909 (Baltimore,
1985); R. A. Atwood, “Telephony and Its Cultural Meanings in Southeastern Iowa,
1900-1917” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1984); Lana Fay Rakow, “Gender, Communication, and the Technology: A Case Study of Women and the Telephone”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987); and I. de S. Pool,
ed., The Social Impact of the Telephone(Cambridge, Mass., 1977). (Note that AT&T,
Bell, and similar corporate names refer, of course, to these companies-or their direct ancestors-up to the U.S. industry reorganization of January 1, 1984.)
SStatistics from AT&T, Events in TelecommunicationsHistory (New York: AT&T,
1979), p. 6; U.S. Bureau of the Census (BOC), HistoricalStatisticsof the United States, Bicentennial Ed., pt. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1975), pp. 783-84.
4Rates are reported in scattered places. For these figures, see BOC, Telephonesand Telegraphs 1902, Special Reports, Department of Commerce and Labor (Washington,
D.C., 1906), p. 53; and 1909 Annual Report of AT&T (New York, 1910), p. 28. Wage
data are from Historical Statistics(n. 3 above), tables D735-38.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
35
TABLE 1
TELEPHONE
1880-1940
DEVELOPMENT,
PerNumber
of
Telephones
Telephones
per
1,000
People
centage
in
Bell
Per-
System
Percentage
Independent,
Connected
to Bell
centage
Residential,
Connected
to Bell
1880 ……..
1885 ……..
1890 ……..
1895 ……..
1900 ……..
1905 ……..
1910 ……..
1915 ……..
1920 ……..
1925……..
1930 ……..
1935 ……..
1940 ……..
54,000
156,000
228,000
340,000
1,356,000
4,127,000
7,635,000
10,524,000
13,273,000
16,875,000
20,103,000
17,424,000
21,928,000
1
3
4
5
18
49
82
104
123
145
163
136
165
100
100
100
91
62
55
52
57
66
75
80
82
84
0
0
0
0
1
6
26
30
29
24
20
18
16
.
…
.
.
.
.
.
.
68
67
65
63
65
1980 ……..
180,000,000
790
81
19
74
SoURcEs.-U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statisticsof the United States, Bicentennial Ed., pt. 2 (Washington,
D.C., 1975), pp. 783-84; and U.S. Bureau of the Census, StatisticalAbstractof the United States 1982-83 (Washington,
D.C., 1984), p. 557.
small cooperative systems, sprang up. Although they typically
served areas that Bell had ignored, occasional head-to-head competition drove costs down and spurred rapid diffusion: almost a ninefold increase in telephones per capita between 1893 and 1902, as
compared to less than a twofold increase in the prior nine years.5
Bell responded fiercely to the competition, engaging in price
wars, political confrontations, and other aggressive tactics. It also
tried to reach less affluent customers with cheaper party lines, coinbox telephones, and “measured service” (charging by the call). Still,
Bell lost at least half the market by 1907. Then, a new management
under Theodore N. Vail, the most influential figure in telephone history, changed strategies. Instead of reckless, preemptive expansion
and price competition, AT&T bought out competitors where it
could and ceded territories where it was losing. With tighter fiscal con5BOC, Telephones,1902 (n. 4 above); Federal Communications Commission (FCC),
ProposedReport: TelephoneInvestigation(Washington, D.C., 1938), p. 147. AT&T has always officially challenged this interpretation; see, e.g., 1909 Annual Report of AT&T,
pp. 26-28.
36
Claude S. Fischer
trol, and facing capital uncertainties as well, AT&T’s rate of expansion declined.6 Meanwhile, the “independents” could not expand
much beyond their small-town bases, partly because they were unable to build their own long-distance lines and were cut off from Bellcontrolled New York City. Many were not competitive because they
were poorly financed and provided poor service. Others accepted
or even solicited buyouts from AT&T or its allies. By 1912, the Bell
System had regained an additional 6 percent of the market.
During this competitive era, the industry offered residential customers a variety of economical party-line plans. Bell’s average residential rate in 1909 was just under two dollars a month (about 4
percent of average wages).7 How much territory the local exchange
covered and what services were provided-for example, nighttime
operators-varied
greatly, but costs dropped and subscriber lists
grew considerably. These basic rates changed little until World War
II (although long-distance charges dropped).
In the face of impending federal antitrust moves, AT&T agreed
in late 1913 to formalize its budding accommodation with the independents. Over several years, local telephone service was divided
into regulated geographic monopolies. The modern U.S. telephone
Bell local service and exclusively Bell longsystem-predominantly
distance service-was essentially fixed from the early 1920s to 1984.
The astronomical growth in the number of telephones during
the pre-Vail era (a compound annual rate of 23 percent per capita
from 1893 to 1907) became simply healthy growth (4 percent between 1907 and 1929). The system was consolidated and technically
improved, and, by 1929, 42 percent of all households had telephones. That figure shrank during the Depression to 31 percent in
1933 but rebounded to 37 percent of all households in 1940.
Sales Strategies
The telephone industry believed, as President Vail testified in
1909, that the “public had to be educated … to the necessity and ad6See, e.g., Annual Report of AT&T, 1907-10; and FCC, ProposedReport (n. 5 above),
pp. 153-154. On making deals with competitors, see, e.g., Rippey (n. 2 above), pp.
143ff.
71909 Annual Report of AT&T, p. 28. Charges for minimal, urban, four-party lines
ranged from $3.00 a month in New York (about 6 percent of the average manufacturing employee’s monthly wages) to $1.50 in Los Angeles (about 3 percent of wages)
and much less in small places with mutual systems; see BOC, Telephonesand Telegraphs and Municipal Electric Fire-Alarmand Police-PatrolSignaling Systems,1912 (Washington, D.C., 1915); and Historical Statistics(n. 3 above), table D740.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
37
vantage of the telephone.”8 And Bell saluted itself on its success in
an advertisement entitled “Blazing the Way”: Bell “had to invent
the business uses of the telephone and convince people that they
were uses…. [Bell] built up the telephone habit in cities like New
York and Chicago…. It has from the start created the need of the
telephone and then supplied it.”9
“Educating the public” typically meant advertising, face-to-face solicitations, and public relations. In the early years, these efforts included informational campaigns, such as publicizing the existence
of the telephone, showing people how to use it, and encouraging
courteous conversation on the line.’0 Once the threat of nationalization became serious, “institutional” advertising and publicity encouraged voters to feel warmly toward the industry.”
As to getting paying customers, the first question vendors had to
ask was, Of what use is this machine? The answer was not self-evident.
For roughly the first twenty-five years, sales campaigns largely employed flyers, simple informational notices in newspapers, “news”
stories supplied to friendly editors (many of whom received free service or were partners in telephony), public demonstrations, and personal solicitations of businessmen. As to uses, salesmen typically
8Testimony on December 9, 1909, in State of New York, Report of the Committeeof
the Senate and AssemblyAppointed to Investigate Telephoneand TelegraphCompanies (Albany, 1910), p. 398.
9Ayer Collection of AT&T Advertisements, Collection of Business Americana, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
‘?See, e.g., Pacific TelephoneMagazine (PT&T employee magazine, hereafter PAC
TEL MAG), 1907-40, passim; 1914 advertisements in SF PION MU folder labeled
“Advertising”; MU IND TEL “Scrapbook” of Southern Indiana Telephone Company clippings; advertisements in directories of the day; “Educating the Public to the
Proper Use of the Telephone,” Telephony64 (June 21, 1913): 32-33; “Swearing over
the Telephone,” Telephony 9 (1905): 418; and “Advertising and Publicity-1906
-1910,” box 1317, AT&T ARCH.
“On AT&T’s institutional advertising, see R. Marchand, “Creating the Corporate
Soul: The Origins of Corporate Image Advertising in America” (paper presented to
the Organization of American Historians, 1980), and N. L. Griese, “AT&T: 1908 Origins of the Nation’s Oldest Continuous Institutional Advertising Campaign,” Journal
of Advertising 6 (Summer 1977): 18-24. FCC, ProposedReport (n. 5 above), has a chapter on “Public Relations”; see also N. R. Danielian, AT&T: The Story of Industrial Conquest (New York, 1939), chap. 13. For a defense of AT&T public relations, see A. W.
Page, The Bell TelephoneSystem(New York, 1941). Among the publicity efforts along
these lines were “free” stories, subsidies of the press, and courting of reporters and politicians (documented in AT&T ARCH). In one comical case, AT&T frantically and apparently unsuccessfully tried in 1920 to pressure Hal Roach to cut out from a
Harold Lloyd film he was producing a burlesque scene of central exchange hysteria
(see folder “Correspondence-E. S. Wilson, V.P., AT&T,” SF PION MU).
38
Claude S. Fischer
stressed those that extended applications of telegraph signaling. For
example, an 1878 circular in New Haven-where the first exchange
was set up-stated that “your wife may order your dinner, a hack,
your family physician, etc., all by Telephone without leaving the
house or trusting servants or messengers to do it.” (It got almost no
response.)12 In these uses, the telephone directly competed withand decisively defeated-attempts
to create telegraph exchanges
that enabled subscribers to signal for services and also efforts to employ printing telegraphs as a sort of “electronic mail” system.’3
In this era and for some years later, the telephone marketers
sought new uses to add to these telegraphic applications. They offered special services over the telephone, such as weather reports,
concerts, sports results, and train arrivals. For decades, vendors cast
about for novel applications: broadcasting news, sports, and music,
night watchman call-in services, and the like. Industry magazines eagerly printed stories about the telephone being used to sell products, alert firefighters about forest blazes, lullaby a baby to sleep,
and get out voters on election day. And yet, industry men often attributed weak demand to not having taught the customer “what to do
with his telephone.”l4
In the first two decades of the 20th century, telephone advertising became more professionally “modern.”‘5 AT&T employed a Bos’2Walsh (n. 2 above), p. 47.
Schmidt, “The Telephone Comes to Pittsburgh” (master’s thesis, University of
Pittsburgh, 1948); Pool, Forecasting(n. 2 above), p. 30; D. Goodman, “Early Electrical
Communications and the City: Applications of the Telegraph in Nineteenth-Century
Urban America” (unpub. paper, Department of Social Sciences, Carnegie-Mellon University, n.d., courtesy of Joel Tarr); and “Telephone History of Dundee, Ontario,”
City File, BELL CAN HIST.
’40n special services and broadcasting, see Walsh (n. 2 above), p. 206; S. H.
Aronson, “Bell’s Electrical Toy: What’s the Use? The Sociology of Early Telephone
Usage,” pp. 15-39, and I. de S. Pool et al., “Foresight and Hindsight: The Case of
the Telephone,” pp. 127-58, both in Pool, ed., Social Impact (n. 2 above); “Broadening the Possible Market,” Printers’ Ink 74 (March 9, 1911): 20; G. O. Steel, “Advertising the Telephone,” Printers’ Ink 51 (April 12, 1905): 14-17; and F. P. Valentine,
“Some Phases of the Commercial Job,” Bell TelephoneQuarterly 5 (January 1926):
34-43. For illustrations of uses, see, e.g., PAC TEL MAG (October 1907), p. 6, (January 1910), p. 9, (December 1912), p. 23, and (October 1920), p. 44; and the independent magazine, Telephony. E.g., the index to vol. 71 (1916) of Telephonylists the
following under “Telephone, novel uses of”: “degree conferred by telephone, dispatching tugs in harbor service, gauging water by telephone, telephoning in an aeroplane.” On complaints about not having taught the public, see the quotation from
H. B. Young, ca. 1929, pp. 91, 100 in “Publicity Conferences-Bell
System1921-34,” box 1310, AT&T ARCH, but similar comments appear in earlier years, as
well as positive claims, such as Vail’s in 1909.
‘5The following discussion draws largely from examination of advertisement collections at the archives listed in n. 2. Space does not permit more than a few examples
13S.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
39
ton agency to dispense “free publicity” and later brought its chief,
J. D. Ellsworth, into the company. It began national advertising campaigns and supplied local Bell companies with copy for their regional presses. Some of the advertising was implicitly competitive
(e.g., stressing that Bell had long-distance service), and much of it
was institutional, directed toward shaping a favorable public opinion about the Bell System. Advertisements for selling service employed drawings, slogans, and texts designed to make the uses of
the telephone-not
(The amount
just the technology-attractive.
and kind of advertising fluctuated, especially in the Bell System, in response to competition, available supplies, and political concerns.)’6
From roughly 1900 to World War I, Bell’s publicity agency advertised uses of the telephone by planting newspaper “stories” on telephones in farm life, in the church, in hotels, and the like.’7 The
national advertisements, beginning around 1910, addressed mostly
businessmen. They stressed that the telephone was impressive to customers and saved time, both at work and at home, and often noted
the telephone’s convenience for planning and for keeping in touch
with the office during vacations.
A second major theme was household management. A 1910 series, for example, presented detailed suggestions: Subscribers could
telephone dressmakers, florists, theaters, inns, rental agents, coal
dealers, schools, and the like. Other uses were suggested, too, such
as conveying messages of moderate urgency (a businessman calling
home to say that he will be late, calling a plumber), and conveying invitations (to an impromptu party, for a fourth at bridge).
Sociability themes (“visiting” kin by telephone, calling home from
a business trip, and keeping “In Touch with Friends and Relatives”)
of hundreds of advertisements in the sources. See esp. at AT&T ARCH, files labeled
“Advertising and Publicity”; at SF PION MU, folders labeled “Advertising” and “Publicity Bureau”; at BELL CAN HIST, “Scrapbooks”; at ILL BELL INFO, “AT&T Advertising” and microfilm 384B, “Adver.”; and at the Ayer Collection (n. 9 above),
the AT&T series.
‘6For explicit discussions, see Mahon (n. 2 above), e.g., pp. 79, 89; Publicity VicePresident A. W. Page’s comments in “Bell System General Commercial Conference,
1930,” microfilm 368B, ILL BELL INFO; and comments by Commercial Engineer
K. S. McHugh in “Bell System General Commercial Conference on Sales Matters,
1931,” microfilm 368B, ILL BELL INFO. On the origins of in-house advertising, see
N. L. Griese, “1908 Origins” (n. 11 above).
‘7See correspondence in “Advertising and Publicity-Bell System-1906-1910,
Folder 1,” box 1317, AT&T ARCH. Some reports claimed that thousands of stories
were placed in hundreds of publications. Apparently no national advertising campaigns were conducted prior to these years; Bell marketing strategy seemed largely
confined to price and service competition. See N. C. Kingsbury, “Results from the
American Telephone’s National Campaign,” Printers’Ink (June 29, 1916): 182-84.
40
Claude S. Fischer
appeared, but they were relatively rare and almost always suggested
sending a message such as an invitation or news of safe arrival
rather than having a conversation. A few advertisements also
pointed out the modernity of the telephone (“It’s up to the
times!”). But the major uses suggested in early telephone advertising were for business and household management; sociability was
rarely advised.18
With the decline of competition and the increase in regulation during the 1910s, Bell stressed public relations even more and pressed
local companies to follow suit. AT&T increasingly left advertising
basic services and uses to its subsidiaries, although much of the
copy still originated in New York, and the volume of such advertising declined. Material from Pacific Telephone and Telegraph
(PT&T), apparently a major advertiser among the Bell companies, indicates the substance of “use” advertising during that era.19
PT&T advertisements for 1914 and 1915 include, aside from informational notices and general paeans to the telephone, a few suggestions for businessmen (e.g., “You fishermen who feel these warm
days of Spring luring you to your favorite stream…. You can adjust affairs before leaving, ascertain the condition of streams, secure accommodations, and always be in touch with business and
home”). Several advertisements mention the home or women, such
as those suggesting that extension telephones add to safety and
those encouraging shopping by telephone. Just one advertisement
in this set explicitly suggests an amiable conversation: A grandmotherly woman is speaking on the telephone, a country vista visible
through the window behind her, and says: “My! How sweet and
clear my daughter’s voice sounds! She seems to be right here with
me!” The text reads: “Let us suggest a long distance visit home
today.” But this sort of advertisement was unusual.
During and immediately after World War I, there was no occasion to promote telephone use, since the industry struggled to meet
demand pent up by wartime diversions. Much publicity tried to
ease customer irritation at delays.
Only in the mid-1920s did AT&T and the Bell companies refo’8In addition to the advertising collections, see A. P. Reynolds, “Selling a Telephone” (to a businessman), Telephony12 (1906): 280-81; id., “The Telephone in Retail Business,” Printers’ Ink 61 (November 27, 1907): 3-8; and “Bell Encourages
Shopping by Telephone,” ibid., vol. 70 (January 19, 1910).
‘gLetter from AT&T Vice-President Reagan to PT&T President H. D. Pillsbury,
March 4, 1929, in “Advertising,” SF PION MU; W. J. Phillips, “The How, What,
When and Why of Telephone Advertising,” talk given July 7, 1926, in ibid.; and “Advertising Conference-Bell System-1916,” box 1310, AT&T ARCH, p. 44.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
41
cus their attention, for the first time in years, to sales efforts.20 The
system was a major advertiser, and Bell leaders actively discussed advertising during the 1920s. Copy focused on high-profit services,
such as long distance and extension sets; modern “psychology,” so
to speak, influenced advertising themes; and Bell leaders became
more sensitive to the competition from other consumer goods. Sociability suggestions increased, largely in the context of long-distance
marketing.
In the United States, long-distance advertisements still overwhelmingly targeted business uses, but “visiting” with kin now appeared
as a frequent suggestion. Bell Canada, for some reason, stressed
family ties much more. Typical of the next two decades of Bell
Canada’s long-distance advertisements are these, both from 1921:
“Why night calls are popular. How good it would sound to hear mother’s voice tonight, he thought-for there were times when he was
lonely-mighty lonely in the big city”; and “it’s a weekly affair now,
those fond intimate talks. Distance rolls away and for a few minutes
every Thursday night the familiar voices tell the little family gossip
that both are so eager to hear.” Sales pointers to employees during
this era often suggested providing customers with lists of their out-oftown contacts’ telephone numbers.
In the 1920s, the advertising industry developed “atmosphere”
techniques, focusing less on the product and more on its consequences for the consumer.21 A similar shift may have begun in
Bell’s advertising, as well: “The Southwestern Bell Telephone Company has decided [in 1923] that it is selling something more vital
than distance, speed or accuracy…. [T]he telephone.. . almost
brings [people] face to face. It is the next best thing to personal contact. So the fundamental purpose of the current advertising is to
sell the company’s subscribers their voices at their true worth-to
help them realize that ‘Your Voice is You.’… to make subscribers
think of the telephone whenever they think of distant friends or relaThis attitude was apparently only a harbinger, because
tives….”22
of the 1920s the sociability theme was largely remost
during
20See n. 16 above.
21D. Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York, 1983); S. Fox, The Mirror
Makers: A History of AmericanAdvertisingand Its Creators(New York, 1984); M. Schudson, Advertising:The UneasyPersuasion(New York, 1985), pp. 60ff; R. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Wayfor Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley, Calif.,
1985); and R. Pollay, “The Subsiding Sizzle: A Descriptive History of Print Advertising, 1900-1980,” Journal of Marketing49 (Summer 1985): 24-37.
22W. B. Edwards, “Tearing Down Old Copy Gods,” Printers’ Ink 123 (April 26,
1923): 65-66.
42
Claude S. Fischer
stricted to long distance and did not appear in many basic service advertisements.
Bell System salesmen spent the 1920s largely selling ancillary services, such as extension telephones, upgrading from party lines,
and long distance, to current subscribers, rather than finding new customers. Basic residential rates averaged two to three dollars a
month (about 2 percent of average manufacturing wages), not
much different from a decade earlier, and Bell leaders did not consider seeking new subscribers to be sufficiently profitable to pursue
seriously.23 The limited new subscriber advertising continued the
largely practical themes of earlier years. PT&T contended that residential telephones, especially extensions, were useful for emergencies, for social convenience (don’t miss a call about an invitation,
call your wife to set an extra place for dinner), and for avoiding
the embarrassment of borrowing a telephone, as well as for its familiar business uses. A 1928 Bell Canada sales manual stressed household practicality first and social invitations second as tactics for
selling basic service.24
Then, in the late 1920s, Bell System leaders-prodded
perhaps
by the embarrassment that, for the first time, more American families owned automobiles, gas service, and electrical appliances than
subscribed to telephones-pressed
a more aggressive strategy. They
built up a full-fledged sales force. And they sought to market the telephone as a “comfort and convenience”-that is, as more than a practical device-drawing
somewhat on the psychological, sensualist
themes in automobile advertising. They focused not only on upgrading the service of current subscribers but also on reaching those car
owners and electricity users who lacked telephones. And the social
character of the telephone was to be a key ingredient in the new
sales strategies.25
Before “comfort and convenience” could go far, however, the Depression drew the industry’s attention to basic service once again. Subscribers were disconnecting. Bell companies mounted campaigns to
23On rates, see W. F. Gray, “Typical Schedules for Rates of Exchange Service,”
and related discussion, in “Bell System General Commercial Engineers’ Conference,
1924,” microfilm 364B, ILL BELL INFO.
24Bell Telephone Company of Canada, “Selling Service on the Job,” ca. 1928, cat.
12223, BELL CAN HIST.
25Comments, esp. by AT&T vice-presidents Page and Gherardi, during “General
Commercial Conference, 1928,” and “Bell System General Commercial Conference,
1930,” both microfilm 368B, ILL BELL INFO, expressed a view that telephones
should be part of consumers’ “life-styles,” not simply their practical instruments.
One hears many echoes of “comfort and convenience” at lower Bell levels during
this period.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
43
save residential connections by mobilizing all employees to sell or
save telephone hookups on their own time (a program that had
started before the Crash), expanding sales forces, advertising to current subscribers, and mounting door-to-door “save” and “nonuser”
campaigns in some communities.6 The “pitches” PT&T suggested
to its employees included convenience (e.g., saving a trip to market), avoiding the humiliation of borrowing a neighbor’s telephone,
and simply being “modern.” Salesmen actually seemed to rely more
on pointing out the emergency uses of the telephone-an appeal especially telling to parents of young children-and suggesting that
job offers might come via the telephone. Having a telephone so as
to be available to friends and relatives was a lesser sales point. By
now, a half-century since A. G. Bell’s invention, salespeople did not
have to sell telephone service itself but had to convince potential customers that they needed a telephone in their own homes.27
During the Depression, long-distance advertising continued, employing both business themes and the themes of family and friendship. But basic service advertising, addressed to both nonusers and
would-be disconnectors, became much more common than it had
been for twenty years.
The first line of argument in print ads for basic service was
practicality-emergency uses, in particular-but suggestions for sociable conversations were more prominent than they had been before. A 1932 advertisement shows four people sitting around a
woman who is speaking on the telephone. “Do Come Over!” the
text reads, “Friends who are linked by telephone have good times.”
A 1934 Bell Canada advertisement features a couple who have just resubscribed and who testify, “We got out of touch with all of our
friends and missed the good times we have now.” A 1935 advertisement asks, “Have you ever watched a person telephoning to a
friend? Have you noticed how readily the lips part into
smiles… ?” And 1939 copy states, “Some one thinks of some one,
reaches for the telephone, and all is well.” A 1937 AT&T advertisement reminds us that “the telephone is vital in emergencies, but
that is not the whole of its service…. Friendship’s path often follows the trail of the telephone wire.” These family-and-friend mo26SeeA. Fancher, “Every Employee Is a Salesman for American Telephone and Telegraph,” Sales Management 28 (February 26, 1931): 45-51, 472; “Bell Conferences,”
1928 and 1930 (n. 25 above), esp. L. J. Billingsley, “Presention of Disconnections,”
in 1930 conference; Pacemaker,a sales magazine for PT&T, ca. 1928-31, SF PION
MU; and Telephony,passim, 1931-36.
27PT&T Pacemaker;interviews by John Chan with retired industry executives in
northern California; see also J. E. Harrel, “Residential Exchange Sales in New England Southern Area,” in “Bell Conference, 1931” (n. 16 above), pp. 67ff.
44
Claude S. Fischer
tifs, more frequent and frank in the 1930s, forecast the jingles of
today, such as “… . a friendly voice, like chicken soup/is good for
your health/Reach out, reach out and touch someone.”28
This brief chronology draws largely from prepared copy in industry archives, not from actual printed advertisements. A systematic
survey, however, of two newspapers in northern California confirms the impression of increasing sociability themes. Aside from
one 1911 advertisement referring to farm wives’ isolation, the first sociability message in the Antioch Ledger appeared in 1929, addressed
to parents: “No girl wants to be a wallflower.” It was followed in
the 1930s with notices for basic service such as “Give your friends
straight access to your home,” and “Call the folks now!” In 1911, advertisements in the Marin (County) Journal stressed the convenience
of the telephone for automotive tourists. Sociability became prominent in both basic and long-distance advertisements in the late
1920s and the 1930s with suggestions that people “broaden the circle of friendly contact” (1927), “Voice visit with friends in nearby cities” (1930), and call grandmother (1935), and with the line, “I got
my telephone for convenience. I never thought it would be such
fun!” (1940).29
The emergence of sociability also appears in guides to telephone
salesmen. A 1904 instruction booklet for sales representatives presents many selling points, but only one paragraph addresses residential service. That paragraph describes ways that the telephone saves
time and labor, makes the household run smoothly, and rescues
users in emergencies, but the only barely social use it notes is that
the telephone “invites one’s friends, asks them to stay away, asks
them to hurry and enables them to invite in return.” Conversationtelephone “visiting”-per se is not mentioned.
A 1931 memorandum to sales representatives, entitled “Your Tele28There is some variation among the advertising collections I examined. Illinois
Bell’s basic service advertisements used during the Depression are, for the most
part, similar to basic service ads used a generation earlier. The Pacific Bell and Bell
Canada advertisements feature sociable conversations much more. On the other
hand, the Bell Canada ads are distinctive in that sociability is almost exclusively a family matter. Friendship, featured in U.S. ads all along, emerges clearly in the Canadian ads only in the 1930s. The 1932 ad cited in the text appears in the August 17
issue of the Antioch (Calif.) Ledger. The “chicken soup” jingle, sung by Roger Miller,
was a Bell System ad in 1981. On the “Touch Someone” campaigns, see M. J. Arlen,
Thirty Seconds (New York, 1980). See also “New Pitch to Spur Phone Use,” New York
Times, October 23, 1985, p. 44.
29These particular newspapers were examined as part of a larger study on the social history of the telephone that will include case studies of three northern California communities from 1890 to 1940.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
45
phone,” is, on the other hand, full of tips on selling residential service and encouraging its use. Its first and longest subsection begins:
“Fostersfriendships. Your telephone will keep your personal friendships alive and active. Real friendships are too rare and valuable to
be broken when you or your friends move out of town. Correspondence will help for a time, but friendships do not flourish for long
on letters alone. When you can’t visit in person, telephone periodically. Telephone calls will keep up the whole intimacy remarkably
well. There is no need for newly-made friends to drop out of your
life when they return to distant homes.” A 1935 manual puts practicality and emergency uses first as sales arguments but explicitly discusses the telephone’s “social importance,” such as saving users
from being “left high and dry by friends who can’t reach [them] conveniently.”30
This account, so far, covers the advertising of the Bell System.
There is less known and perhaps less to know about the independent companies’ advertising. Independents’ appeals seem much like
those of the Bell System, stressing business, emergencies, and practicality, except perhaps for showing an earlier sensitivity to sociability
among their rural clientele.31
In sum, the variety of sales materials portray a similar shift.
From the beginning to roughly the mid-1920s, the industry sold service as a practical business and household tool, with only occasional
mention of social uses and those largely consisting of brief messages. Later sales arguments, for both long-distance and basic service, featured social uses prominently, including the suggestion that
the telephone be used for converations (“voice visiting”) among
30Central Union Telephone Company Contracts Department, Instructions and Information for Solicitors, 1904, ILL BELL INFO. Note that Central Union had been, at
least through 1903, one of Bell’s most aggressive solicitors of business. Illinois Bell
Commercial Department, Sales Manual 1931, microfilm, ILL BELL INFO. Ohio Bell
Telephone Company, “How You Can Sell Telephones,” 1935, file “Salesmanship,”
BELL CAN HIST.
3’Until 1894, independent companies did not exist. For years afterward, they
largely tried to meet unfilled demand in the small cities and towns Bell had
underserved. In other places, they advertised competitively against Bell. Nevertheless, advertising men often exhorted the independents to use “salesmanship in print”
to encourage basic service and extensive use. See, e.g., J. A. Schoell, “Advertising
and Other Thoughts of the Small Town Man,” Telephony70 (June 10, 1916): 40-41;
R. D. Mock, “Fundamental Principles of the Telephone Business: Part V, Telephone
Advertising,” series in ibid., vol. 71 (July 22-November 21, 1916); D. Hughes,
“Right Now Is the Time to Sell Service,” ibid., 104 (June 10, 1933): 14-15; and L.
M. Berry, “Helpful Hints for Selling Service,” ibid., 108 (February 2, 1935): 7-10.
” (Chicago: KelSee also Kellogg Company, “A New Business Campaign for
logg, 1929), MU IND TEL.
46
Claude S. Fischer
friends and family. While it would be helpful to confirm this impressionistic account with firm statistics, for various reasons it is difficult
to draw an accurate sample of advertising copy and salesmen’s
pitches for over sixty years. (For one, we have no easily defined “universe” of advertisements. Are the appropriate units specific printed
ads, or ad campaigns? How are duplicates to be handled? Or ads in
neighboring towns? Do they include planted stories, inserts in telephone bills, billboards, and the like? Should locally generated ads
be included? And what of nationally prepared ads not used by the locals? For another, we have no clear “population” of ads. The available collections are fragmentary, often preselected for various
reasons.) An effort in that direction appears, however, in table 2, in
which the numbers of “social” advertisements show a clear increase,
both absolutely and relatively.
TABLE 2
COUNTS
OF DOMINANT
Sources and Types of Advertisements
Antioch (Calif.) Ledger:
Social, sociability ………………….
Business, businessmen ……………..
Household, convenience, etc …………
Public relations, other ……………..
Total
………………………..
Approximate ratio of
social to others ………………..
Marin (Calif.) Journal:
Social, sociability ………………….
Business, businessmen ……………..
Household, convenience, etc …………
Public relations, other ……………..
Total …………………………
Approximate ratio of
social to others ………………..
Bell Canada:
Social, sociability ………………….
Business, businessmen ……………..
Household, convenience, etc …………
Public relations, other ……………..
Total …………………………
Approximate ratio of
social to others ………………..
ADVERTISING
THEMES BY PERIOD
Prewar
1919-29
1930-40
1
6
5
0
(1)
(5)
(5)
(0)
1
1
3
4
(1)
(1)
(3)
(3)
6
2
4
1
(4)
(1)
(3)
(1)
12
(11)
9
(8)
13
(9)
1:11
(1:10)
1:8
(1:7)
1:1
(1:1)
1
2
12
0
(1)
(2)
(12)
(0)
5
8
3
19
(2)
(2)
(3)
(13)
43
10
20
25
(20)
(3)
(20)
(16)
15
(15)
35
(20)
98
(59)
(1:14)
1:6
(1:9)
1:1
(1:2)
(2)
(20)
(28)
(30)
25 (1)
15 (2)
3 (3)
25 (40)
59*
24*
23*
2
(9)
(4)
(6)
(2)
1:14
5
20*
28
30*
83* (80)
1:16
(1:39)
68
(46)
108* (21)
1:2
(1:45)
1:1
(1:1)
47
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
TABLE 2 (continued)
Sources and Types of Advertisements
PacificTelephone, 1914-15:
Social, sociability ………………….
Business, businessmen ……………..
Household, convenience, etc ………..
Public relations, other ……………..
Total
………………………..
Prewar
1919-29
1930-40
2 (1)
7 (6)
18 (16)
..
……
…
…
16
(9)
……
43
(32)
Approximate ratio of
social to others ………………..
Assorted Bell ads, 1906-10:
Social, sociability ………………….
Business, businessmen ……………..
Household, convenience, etc ………..
Public relations, other ……………..
Total
…………………………
1:21
(1:31)
4 (4)
13 (12)
11 (11)
..
…
……
……
……
9
(9)
……
37
(36)
..
1:8
(1:8)
…..
Approximate ratio of
social to others
……………….
SoURcES.-Advertisements in the AntiochLedgerwere sampled from 1906 to 1940 by Barbara Loomis; those in the
Marin Journal were sampled from 1900 to 1940 byJohn Chan. The Bell Canada collection appears in scrapbooks at
Bell Canada Historical; the Pacific collection is in the San Francisco Pioneer Telephone Museum. The AT&T
advertisements are from AT&T ARCH, box 1317. Other, spotty collections were used for the study but not counted
here because they were not as systematic. All coding was done by the author.
NoTE.-Counts in parentheses exclude explicitly long-distance advertisements. Usually each ad had one dominant
theme. When more than one seemed equal in weight, the ad was counted in both categories. “Social, sociability” refers
to the use of the telephone for personal contact, incuding season’s greetings, invitations, and conversation between
friends and family. (Note that the inclusion of brief messages in this category makes the analysis a conservative test of
the argument that there was a shift toward sociability themes.) “Business, businessmen” refers to the explicit use of the
telephone for business purposes or general appeals to businessmen-e.g., that the telephone will make one a more
forceful entrepreneur. “Household, convenience, etc.” includes the use of the telephone for household management,
personal convenience (e.g., don’t get wet, order play tickets), and for emergencies, such as illness or burglary. “Public
relations, other” includes general institutional advertising, informational notices (such as how to use the telephone),
and other miscellaneous. Perhaps the most conservative index is the ratio of non-long-distance social ads to non-longdistance household ads. (Business ads move to speciality magazines over the years; public information ads fluctuate
with political events; and long-distance ads may be “inherently” social.) In the AntiochLedger,this ratio changes from
1:5 to 4:3; in the Marin Journal, from 1:12 to 1:1; and in Bell Canada’s ads, from 1:14 to 1.5:1. Even these ratios
understate the shift, for several reasons. One, I was much more alert to social than to other ads and was more thorough
with early social ads than any other category. Two, the household category is increased in the later years by numerous
ads for extension telephones. Three, the nature of the social ads counted here changes. The earlier ones overwhelmingly suggest using the telephone for greetings and invitations, not conversation. With rare exception, only the later
ones discuss friendliness and “warm human relationships” and suggest chats.
*Estimated.
48
Claude S. Fischer
IndustryAttitudestowardSociability
This change in advertising themes apparently reflected a change in
the actual beliefs industry men held about the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell himself forecast social chitchats using his invention. He predicted that eventually Mrs. Smith would spend an hour
on the telephone with Mrs. Brown “very enjoyably… cutting up
Mrs. Robinson.”32 But for decades few of his successors saw it that
way.
Instead, the early telephone vendors often battled their residential customers over social conversations, labeling such calls “frivolous” and “unnecessary.” For example, an 1881 announcement
complained, “The fact that subscribers have been free to use the
wires as they pleased without incurring additional expense [i.e., flat
rates] has led to the transmission of large numbers of communications of the most trivial character.”33In 1909, a local telephone manager in Seattle listened in on a sample of conversations coming
through a residential exchange and determined that 20 percent of
the calls were orders to stores and other businesses, 20 percent
were from subscribers’ homes to their own businesses, 15 percent
were social invitations, and 30 percent were “purely idle gossip”-a
rate that he claimed was matched in other cities. The manager’s concern was to reduce this last, “unnecessary use.” One tactic for doing
so, in addition to “education” campaigns on proper use of the telephone, was to place time limits on calls (in his survey the average
call had lasted over seven minutes). Time limits were often an explicit effort to stop people who insisted on chatting when there was
“business” to be conducted.34
32Quoted in Aronson, “Electrical Toy” (n. 14 above).
33Proposed announcement by National Capitol Telephone Company, in letter to
Bell headquarters, January 20, 1881, box 1213, AT&T ARCH. In a similar vein, the
president of Bell Canada confessed, ca. 1890, to being unable to stop “trivial conversations”; see Collins, A Voice(n. 2 above), p. 124. The French authorities were also exasperated by nonserious uses; see C. Bertho, Telgraphes et telephones (Paris, 1980), pp.
244-45.
3C. H. Judson, “Unprofitable Traffic-What Shall Be Done with It?” Telephony18
(December 11, 1909): 644-47, and PAC TEL MAG 3 (January, 1910): 7. He also
writes, “the telephone is going beyond its original design, and it is a positive fact
that a large percentage of telephones in use today on a flat rental basis are used
more in entertainment, diversion, social intercourse and accommodation to others,
than in actual cases of business or household necessity” (p. 645). MacMeal, Independent (n. 2 above), p. 240, reports on a successful campaign in 1922 to discourage
gossipers through letters and advertisements. Typically, calls were-at least officiallylimited to five minutes in many places, although it is unclear how well limits were enforced.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
49
An exceptional few in the industry, believing in a more “populist” telephony, did, however, try to encourage such uses. E. J. Hall,
Yale-educated and originally manager of his family’s firebrick business, initiated the first “measured service” in Buffalo in 1880 and
later became an AT&T vice-president. A pleader for lower rates,
Hall also defended “trivial” calls, arguing that they added to the
total use-value of the system. But the evident isolation of men like
Hall underlines the dominant antisociability view of the pre-World
War I era.35
Official AT&T opinions came closer to Hall’s in the later 1920s
when executives announced that, whereas the industry had previously thought of telephone service as a practical necessity, they now
realized that it was more: it was a “convenience, comfort, luxury”;
its value included its “trivial” social uses. In 1928, Publicity VicePresident A. W. Page, who had entered AT&T from the publishing
industry the year before, was most explicit when he criticized earlier views: “There had also been the point of view [in the Bell System and among the public] about not using the telephone for
frivolous conversation. This is about as commercial as if the automobile people should advertise. ‘Please do not take out this car unless
you are going on a serious errand….’ We are faced, I think, with a
state of public consciousness that the telephone is a necessity and
not to be trifled with, certainly in the home.” Bell sales officials
were told to sell telephone service as a “comfort and convenience,” including as a conversational tool.36
Although this change in opinion is most visible for the Bell System, similar trends can be seen in the pages of the journal of the independent companies, Telephony, especially in regard to rural
customers. Indeed, early conflict about telephone sociability was
most acute in rural areas. During the monopoly era, Bell companies largely neglected rural demand. The depth and breadth of
35Hall’s philosophy is evident in the correspondence over measured service before
1900, box 1127, AT&T ARCH. Decades later, he pushed it in a letter to E. M. Burgess, Colorado Telephone Company, March 30, 1905, box 1309, AT&T ARCH, even
arguing that operators should stop turning away calls made by children and should instead encourage such “trivial uses.” The biographical information comes from an obituary in AT&T ARCH. Another, more extreme populist was John L. Sabin, of PT&T
and the Chicago Telephone Co.; see Mahon (n. 2 above), pp. 29ff.
6A. W. Page, “Public Relations and Sales,” “General Commercial Conference,
1928,” p. 5, microfilm 368B, ILL BELL INFO. See also comments by Vice-President
Gherardi and others in same conference and related ones of the period. On Page
and the changes he instituted, see G. J. Griswold, “How AT&T Public Relations Policies Developed,” Public RelationsQuarterly12 (Fall 1967): 7-16; and Marchand, Advertising (n. 21 above), pp. 117-20.
50
Claude S. Fischer
that demand became evident in the first two decades of this century, when proportionally more farm than urban households obtained telephones, the former largely from small commercial or
cooperative local companies. Sociability both spurred telephone subscription and irritated the largely non-Bell vendors.
The 1907 Census of Telephones argued that in areas of isolated
farmhouses “a sense of community life is impossible without this
ready means of communication…. The sense of loneliness and insecurity felt by farmers’ wives under former conditions disappears,
and an approach is made toward the solidarity of a small country
town.” Other official investigations bore similar witness.37 Rural telephone men also dwelt on sociability. One independent company official stated: “When we started the farmers thought they could get
Now you couldn’t take them out. The
along without telephones….
women wouldn’t let you even if the men would. Socially, they have
been a godsend. The women of the county keep in touch with each
other, and with their social duties, which are largely in the nature
of church work.”38
Although the episodic sales campaigns to farmers stressed the practical advantages of the telephone, such as receiving market prices,
weather reports, and emergency aid, the industry addressed the social theme more often to them than to the general public. A PT&T
series in 1911, for example, focused on the telephone in emergencies, staying informed, and saving money. But one additional advertisement said it was: “A Blessing to the Farmer’s Wife. … It relieves
the monotony of life. She CANNOT be lonesome with the Bell Service….”39 For all that, telephone professionals who dealt with farm37BOC, Special Reports: Telephones:1907 (Washington, D.C., 1910), pp. 77-78; see
also U.S. Congress, Senate, Country Life Commission, 60th Cong., 2d sess., 1909, S.
Doc. 705; and F. E. Ward, The Farm Woman’sProblems,USDA Circular 148 (Washington, D.C., 1920). See also C. S. Fischer, “The Revolution in Rural Telephony,”Journal of Social History (in press).
38Quoted in R. F. Kemp, “Telephones in Country Homes,” Telephony 9 (June
1905): 433. A 1909 article claims that “[t]he principle use of farm line telephones
has been their social use…. The telephones are more often and for longer times
held for neighborly conversations than for any other purpose.” It goes on to stress
that subscribers valued conversation with anyone on the line; see G. R. Johnston,
“Some Aspects of Rural Telephony,” Telephony17 (May 8, 1909): 542. See also R. L.
Tomblen, “Recent Changes in Agriculture as Revealed by the Census,” Bell Telephone
Quarterly9 (October 1932): 334-50; and J. West (C. Withers), Plainville, U.S.A. (New
York, 1945), p. 10.
39The PT&T series appeared in the Antioch (Calif.) Ledger in 1911. For some examples and discussions of sales strategies to farmers, see Western Electric, “How to
Build Rural Lines,” n.d., “Rural Telephone Service, 1944-46,” box 1310, AT&T
ARCH; Stromberg-Carlson Telephone Manufacturing Company, TelephoneFacts for
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
51
ers often fought the use of the line for nonbusiness conversations,
at least in the early years. The pages of Telephonyoverflow with complaints about farmers on many grounds, not the least that they tied
up the lines for chats.
More explicit appreciation of the value of telephone sociability to
farmers emerged later. A 1931 account of Bell’s rural advertising activities stressed business uses, but noted that “only within recent
years [has] emphasis been given to [the telephone’s] usefulness in
everyday activities . . the commonplaces of rural life.” A 1932 article in the Bell TelephoneQuarterlynotes that “telephone usage for social purposes in rural areas is fundamentally important.” Ironically,
in 1938, an independent telephone man claimed that the social
theme had been but was no longer an effective sales point because the
automobile and other technologies had already reduced farmers’ isolation!40
As some passages suggest, the issue of sociability was also tied up
with gender. When telephone vendors before World War I addressed women’s needs for the telephone, they usually meant household management, security, and emergencies. There is evidence,
however, that urban, as well as rural, women found the telephone
to be useful for sociability.41When industry men criticized chatting
Farmers(Rochester, N.Y., 1903), Warshaw Collection, Smithsonian Institution; “Facts
regarding the Rural Telephone,” Telephony9 (April 1905): 303. In Printers’ Ink, “The
Western Electric,” 65 (December 23, 1908): 3-7; F. X. Cleary, “Selling to the Rural District,” 70 (February 23, 1910): 11-12; “Western Electric Getting Farmers to Install
Phones,” 76 (July 27, 1911): 20-25; and H. C. Slemin, “Papers to Meet ‘Trust’ Competition,” 78 (January 18, 1912): 28.
40R.T. Barrett, “Selling Telephones to Farmers by Talking about Tomatoes,” Printers’ Ink (November 5, 1931): 49-50; Tomblen (n. 38 above); and J. D. Holland, “Telephone Service Essential to Progressive Farm Home,” Telephony 114 (February 19,
1938): 17-20. See also C. S. Fischer, “Technology’s Retreat: The Decline of Rural Telephones, 1920-1940,” Social ScienceHistory (in press).
41A 1925 survey of women’s attitudes toward home appliances by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs showed that respondents preferred automobiles and telephones above indoor plumbing; see M. Sherman, “What Women Want in Their
Homes,” Woman’sHome Companion52 (November 1925): 28, 97-98. A census survey
of 500,000 homes in the mid-1920s reportedly found that the telephone was considered a primary household appliance because it, with the automobile and radio, “offer[s] the homemaker the escape from monotony which drove many of her
predecessors insane”; reported in VoiceTelephoneMagazine, in-house organ of United
Communications, December 1925, p. 3, MU IND TEL. One of our interviewees who
conducted door-to-door telephone sales in the 1930s said that women were attracted
to the service first in order to talk to kin and friends, second for appointments and
shopping, and third for emergencies, while, for men, employment and business reasons ranked first. See also Rakow, “Gender” (n. 2 above), and C. S. Fischer, “Women
and the Telephone, 1890-1940,” paper presented to the American Sociological Association, 1987.
52
Claude S. Fischer
on the telephone, they almost always referred to the speaker as
“she.” Later, in the 1930s, the explicit appeals to sociability also emphasized women; the figures in such advertisements, for example,
were overwhelmingly women.
In rough parallel with the shift in manifest advertising appeals toward sociability, there was a shift in industry attitudes from irritation with to approval of sociable conversations as part of the
telephone’s “comfort, convenience, and luxury.”
EconomicExplanations
Why were the telephone companies late and reluctant to suggest sociable conversations as a use? There are several, not mutually exclusive, possible answers. The clearest is that there was no profit in
sociability at first but profit in it later.
Telephone companies, especially Bell, argued that residential service had been a marginal or losing proposition, as measured by the
revenues and expenses accounted to each instrument, and that business service had subsidized local residential service. Whether this argument is valid remains a matter of debate. Nevertheless, the belief
that residential customers were unprofitable was common, especially among line workers, and no doubt discouraged intensive sales
efforts to householders.42 At times, Bell lacked the capital to construct lines needed to meet residential demand. These constraints
seemed to motivate occasional orders from New York not to advertise basic service or to do so only to people near existing and unsaturated lines.43 And, at times, there was a technical incompatibility
42See, e.g., J. W. Sichter, “Separations Procedures in the Telephone Industry,”
paper P-77-2, Harvard University Program on Information Resources (Cambridge,
Mass., 1977); Public UtilitiesDigest, 1930s-1940s, passim; “Will Your Phone Rates Double?” ConsumerReports (March 1984): 154-56. Chan’s industry interviewees believed
this cross subsidy to be true, as, apparently, did AT&T’s commercial engineers; see various “Conferences” cited above, AT&T ARCH and ILL BELL INFO.
43E.g., commercial engineer C. P. Morrill wrote in 1914 that “we are not actively
seeking new subscribers except in a few places where active competition makes this necessary. Active selling is impossible due to rapid growth on the Pacific Coast.” He encouraged sales of party lines in congested areas, individual lines in place of party
lines elsewhere, extensions, more calling, directory advertisements, etc., rather than
expanding basic service into new territories; see PAC TEL MAG 7 (1914): 13-16.
And, in 1924, the Bell System’s commercial managers decided to avoid canvassing in
areas that would require plant expansion and to stress instead long-distance calls
and services, especially for large business users; see correspondence from B.
Gherardi, vice-president, AT&T, to G. E. McFarland president, PT&T, July 14,
SF PION MU, and
1924, and November 26, 1924, folder “282-Conferences,”
exchage with McFarland, May 10 and May 20, 1924, folder “Correspondence-B.
Gherardi,” SF PION MU.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
53
between the quality of service Bell had accustomed its business subscribers to expect and the quality residential customers were willing
to pay for. Given these considerations, Bell preferred to focus on
the business class, who paid higher rates, bought additional equipment, and made long-distance calls.44
Still, when they did address residential customers, why did telephone vendors not employ the sociability theme until the 1920s, relying for so long only on practical uses? Perhaps social calls were an
untouched and elastic market of consumer demand. Having sold
the service to those who might respond to practical appeals-and perhaps by World War I everyone knew those practical uses-vendors
might have thought that further expansion depended on selling
“new” social uses of the telephone.45 Similarly, vendors may have
thought they had already enrolled all the subscribers they
could-42 percent of American households in 1930-and shifted attention to encouraging use, especially of toll lines. We have seen
how sales efforts for intercity calls invoked friends and family. But
this explanation does not suffice. It leaves as a puzzle why the sociability themes continued in the Depression when the industry focused
again on simply ensuring subscribers and also why the industry’s internal attitudes shifted as well.
Perhaps the answer is in the rate structures. Initially, telephone
companies charged a flat rate for unlimited local use of the service.
In such a system, extra calls and lengthy calls cost users nothing
but are unprofitable to providers because they take operator time
and, by occupying lines, antagonize other would-be callers. Some industry men explicitly blamed “trivial” calls on flat rates.46Discouraging “visiting” on the telephone then made sense.
Although flat-rate charges continued in many telephone exchanges, especially smaller ones, throughout the period, Bell and others instituted “measured service” in full or in part-charging
additionally per call-in most large places during the era of competition. In St. Louis in 1898, for example, a four-party telephone cost
forty-five dollars a year for 600 calls a year, plus eight cents a call
in excess.47 This system allowed companies to reduce basic subscrip44The story of the Chicago exchange under John L. Sabin illustrates the point.
See R. Garnet, “The Central Union Telephone Company,” box 1080, AT&T ARCH.
45This point was suggested by John Chan from the interviews.
46See n. 33, 34. This is also the logic of a recent New York Telephone Co. campaign to encourage social calls: The advertising will not run in upstate New York
“since the upstaters tend to have flat rates and there would be no profit in having
them make unnecessary calls” (see “New Pitch,” n. 28 above).
47Letter to AT&T President Hudson, December 27, 1898, box 1284, AT&T
ARCH. On measured service in general, see “Measured Service Rates,” boxes 1127,
54
Claude S. Fischer
tion fees and thus attract customers who wanted the service only
for occasional use.
Company officials had conflicting motives for pressing measured
service. Some saw it simply as economically rational, charging according to use. Others saw it as a means of reducing “trivial” calls and
the borrowing of telephones by nonsubscribers. A few others, such
as E. J. Hall, saw it as a vehicle for bringing in masses of small users.
The industry might have welcomed social conversations, if it
could charge enough to make up for uncompleted calls and for the
frustrated subscribers busy lines produced. In principle, under measured service, it could. (As it could with long distance, where each
minute was charged.) Although mechanical time metering was apparently not available for most or all of this period, rough time
charges for local calls existed in principle, since “messages” were typically defined as five minutes long or any fraction thereof. Thus, “visiting” for twenty minutes should have cost callers four “messages.”
In such systems, the companies would have earned income from sociability and might have encouraged it.48
However, changes from flat rates to measured rates do not seem
to explain the shift toward sociability around the 1920s. Determining the extent that measured service was actually used for urban residential customers is difficult because rate schedules varied widely
from town to town even within the same states. But the timing does
not fit. The big exchanges with measured residential rates had
them early on. For example, in 1904, 96 percent of Denver’s residential subscribers were on at least a partial measured system, and, in
1905, 90 percent of those in Brooklyn, New York, were as well.
(Yet, Los Angeles residential customers continued to have flat
1213, 1287, 1309, AT&T ARCH; F. H. Bethell, “The Message Rate,” repr. 1913,
AT&T ARCH; H. B. Stroud, “Measured Telephone Service,” Telephony6 (September
1903): 153-56, and (October 1903): 236-38; andJ. E. Kingsbury, The Telephoneand TelephoneExchanges (London, 1915), pp. 469-80.
48Theodore Vail claimed in 1909 that mechanical time metering was impossible (in
testimony to a New York State commission, see n. 8 above, p. 470). See also Judson
(n. 34 above), p. 647. In 1928, an operating engineer suggested overtime charges on
five-minute calls and stated that equipment for monitoring overtime was now available; see L. B. Wilson, “Report on Commercial Operations, 1927,” in “General Commercial Conference, 1928,” p. 28, microfilm 368B, ILL BELL INFO. On the
five-minute limit, see “Measured Service,” box 1127, AT&T ARCH, passim; and Bell
Canada, The First Centuryof Service (Montreal, 1980), p. 4. There is no confirmation
on how strict operators in fact were in charging overtime. The Bell System, at least,
was never known for its laxness in such matters.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
55
rates.)49 There is little sign that these rate systems altered significantly in the next twenty-five years while sociability themes emerged.
Conversely, flat rates persisted in small exchanges beyond the
1930s. Moreover, sociability themes appeared more often in rural
sales campaigns than in urban ones, despite the fact the rural areas remained on flat-rate schedules.
Although concern that long social calls occupied lines and operators-with financial losses to the companies-no doubt contributed to the industry’s resistance to sociability, it is not a sufficient explanation of those attitudes or, especially, of the timing of their
change.
TechnicalExplanations
Industry spokesmen early in the era would probably have
claimed that technical considerations limited “visiting” by telephone.
Extended conversations monopolized party lines. That is why companies, often claiming customer pressure, encouraged, set-or sought
legal permission to set-time limits on calls. Yet, this would not explain the shift toward explicit sociability, because as late as 1930,
40-50 percent of Bell’s main telephones in almost all major cities
were still on party lines, a proportion not much changed from
1915.50
A related problem was the tying up of toll lines among exchanges, especially those among villages and small towns. Rural cooperatives complained that the commercial companies provided them
with only single lines between towns. The companies resisted setting up more, claiming they were underpaid for that service. This
49Denver: letter from E. J. Hall to E. W. Burgess, 1905, box 1309, AT&T ARCH;
Brooklyn: BOC, Telephones,1902 (n. 4 above); Los Angeles: “Telephone on the Pacific Coast, 1878-1923,” box 1045, AT&T ARCH.
50On company claims, see, e.g., “Limiting Party Line Conversations,” Telephony66
(May 2, 1914): 21; and MacMeal (n. 2 above), p. 224. On party-line data, compare
the statistics in the letter from J. P. Davis to A. Cochrane, April 2, 1901, box 1312,
AT&T ARCH, to those in B. Gherardi and F. B. Jewett, “Telephone Communications System of the United States,” Bell System TechnicalJournal 1 (January 1930):
1-100. The former show, e.g., that, in 1901, in the five cities with the most subscribers, an average of 31 percent of telephones were on party lines. For those five cities
in 1929, the percentage was 36. Smaller exchanges tended to have even higher proportions. See also “Supplemental Telephone Statistics, PT&T,” “Correspondence-Du
Bois,” SF PION MU. The case of Bell Canada also fails to support a party-line explanation. Virtually all telephones in Montreal and Toronto were on individual lines until
1920.
56
Claude S. Fischer
single-line connection would create an incentive to suppress social
conversations, at least in rural areas. But this does not explain the
shift toward sociability either. The bottleneck was resolved much
later than the sales shift when it became possible to have several
calls on a single line.51
The development of long distance might also explain increased sociability selling. Over the period covered here, the technology improved rapidly, AT&T’s long-distance charges dropped, and its
costs dropped even more. The major motive for residential subscribers to use long distance was to greet kin or friends. Additionally, overtime was well monitored and charged. Again, while probably
contributing to the overall frequency of the sociability theme, longdistance development seems insufficient to explain the change. Toll
calls as a proportion of all calls increased from 2.5 percent in 1900
to 3.2 percent in 1920 and 4.1 percent in 1930, then dropped to
3.3 percent in 1940. They did not reach even 5 percent of all calls
until the 1960s.52 More important, the shift toward sociability appears in campaigns to sell basic service and to encourage local use,
as well as in long-distance ads. (See table 2.)
CulturalExplanations
While both economic and technical considerations no doubt
framed the industry’s attitude toward sociability, neither seems sufficient to explain the historical change. Part of the explanation probably lies in the cultural “mind-set” of the telephone men.
In many ways, the telephone industry descended directly from
the telegraph industry. The instruments are functionally very similar; technical developments sometimes applied to both. The people
who developed, built, and marketed telephone systems were predominantly telegraph men. Theodore Vail himself came from a family involved in telegraphy and started his career as a telegrapher. (In
contrast, E. J. Hall and A. W. Page, among the supporters of “triviality,” had no connections to telegraphy. J. L. Sabin, a man of the
51″Carrier currents” allowed multiple conversations on the same line. The first
one was developed in 1918, but for many years they were limited to use on longdistance trunk lines, not local toll lines. See, e.g., R. Coe, “Some Distinguishing Characteristics of the Telephone Business,” Bell Telephone Quarterly 6 (January 1927):
47-51, esp. pp. 49-50; and R. C. Boyd, J. D. Howard, Jr., and L. Pederson, “A New
Carrier System for Rural Service,” Bell System TechnicalJournal 26 (March 1957):
349-90. The first long-distance carrier line was established in Canada in 1928, after
the long-distance sociability theme had emerged; see Bell Canada, First Century, no.
46, p. 28.
52BOC,Historical Statistics(n. 3 above), p. 783.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
57
same bent, did have roots in telegraphy.) Many telephone companies had started as telegraph operations. Indeed, in 1880, Western
Union almost displaced Bell as the telephone company. And the organization of Western Union served in some ways as a model for Bell.
Telephone use often directly substituted for telegraph use. Even
the language used to talk about the telephone revealed its ancestry.
For example, an early advertisement claimed that the telephone system was the “cheapest telegraph service ever.” Telephone calls were
long referred to as “messages.” American telegraphy, finally, was
rarely used even for brief social messages.53
No wonder, then, that the uses proposed first and for decades to
follow largely replicated those of a printing telegraph: business
communiques, orders, alarms, and calls for services. In this context,
industry men reasonably considered telephone “visiting” to be an
abuse or trivialization of the service. Internal documents suggest
that most telephone leaders typically saw the technology as a business instrument and a convenience for the middle class, claimed
that people had to be sold vigorously on these marginal advantages,
and believed that people had no “natural” need for the telephoneindeed, that most (the rural and working class) would never need
it. Customers would have to be “educated” to it.54 AT&T ViceO30nthe telegraph background of early telephone leaders, see, e.g., A. B. Paine, TheodoreN. Vail (New York, 1929); Rippey (n. 2 above); and W. Patten, Pioneering the Telephone in Canada (Montreal: Telephone Pioneers, 1926). Interestingly, this was true of
Bell and the major operations. But the leaders of small-town companies were typically businessmen and farmers; see, e.g., On the Line (Madison: Wisconsin State Telephone Association, 1985). On Western Union and Bell, see G. D. Smith, The Anatomy
of a Business Strategy:Bell, WesternElectric,and the Origins of the AmericanTelephoneIndustry (Baltimore, 1985). The “cheapest telegraph” appears in a Buffalo flier of November 13, 1880, box 1127, AT&T ARCH. On the infrequent use of the telegraph for
social messages, see R. B. DuBoff, “Business Demand and Development of the Telegraph in the United States, 1844-1860,” Business History Review 54 (Winter 1980):
459-79.
54In the very earliest days, Vail had expected that the highest level of development would be one telephone per 100 people; by 1880, development had reached
four per 100 in some places; see Garnet (n. 2 above), p. 133, n. 3. It reached one
per 100 Americans before 1900 (see table 1). In 1905, a Bell estimate assumed that
twenty telephones per 100 Americans was the saturation point and even that “may appear beyond reason”; see “Estimated Telephone Development, 1905-1920,” letter
from S. H. Mildram, AT&T, to W. S. Allen, AT&T, May 22, 1905, box 1364, AT&T
ARCH. The saturation date was forecast for 1920. This estimate was optimistic in its
projected rate of diffusion-twenty per 100 was reached only in 1945-but very pessimistic in its projected level of diffusion. That level was doubled by 1960 and tripled
by 1980. One reads in Bell documents of the late 1920s of concern that the automobile and other new technologies were far outstripping telephone diffusion. Yet, even
then, there seemed to be no assumption that the telephone would reach the near universality in American homes of, say, electricity or the radio.
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Claude S. Fischer
President Page was reacting precisely against this telegraphy perspective in his 1928 defense of “frivolous” conversation. At the same
conference, he also decried the psychological effect of telephone advertisements that explicitly compared the instrument to the telegraph.55
Industry leaders long ignored or repressed telephone sociabilityfor the most part, I suggest, because such conversations did not fit
their understandings of what the technology was supposed to be
for. Only after decades of customer insistence on making such callsand perhaps prodded by the popularity of competing technologies,
such as the automobile and radio-did the industry come to adopt sociability as a means of exploiting the technology.
This argument posits a generation-long lag, a mismatch, between
how subscribers used the telephone and how industry men thought
it would be used. A variant of the argument (posed by several auditors of this article) suggests that there was no mismatch, that the
industry’s attitudes and advertising accurately reflected public practice. Sales strategies changed toward sociability around the mid1920s because, in fact, people began using the telephone that way
more. This increase in telephone visiting occurred for perhaps one
or more reasons-a drop in real costs, an increase in the number
of subscribers available to call, clearer voice transmission, more comfortable instruments (from wall sets to the “French” handsets), measured rates, increased privacy with the coming of automatic dial
switching, and so on-and the industry’s marketing followed usage.
To address this argument fully would require detailed evidence
on the use of the telephone over time, which we do not have. Recollections by some elderly people suggest that they visited by telephone
less often and more quickly in the “old days,” but they cannot specify exact rates or in what era practices changed.56 On the other
hand, anecdotes, comments by contemporaries, and fragments of numerical data (e.g., the 1909 Seattle “study”) suggest that residential
users regularly visited by telephone before the mid-1920s, whatever the etiquette was supposed to be, and that such calls at least
equaled calls regarding household management. Yet, telephone advertising in the period overwhelmingly stressed practical use and ignored or suppressed sociability use.
Changes in customers’ practices may have helped spur a change
55Page 53 in L. B. Wilson (chair), “Promoting Greater Toll Service,” “General Commercial Conference, 1928,” microfilm 368B, ILL BELL INFO.
56This comment is based on the oral histories reported by Rakow (n. 2 above) and
by several interviews conducted in San Rafael, Calif., by John Chan for this project.
See also Fischer, “Women” (n. 41).
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
59
in advertising-although there is no direct evidence of this in the industry archives-but some sort of mismatch existed for a long time
between actual use and marketing. Its source appears to be, in
large measure, cultural.
This explanation gains additional plausibility from the parallel
case of the automobile, about which space permits only brief mention. The early producers of automobiles were commonly former bicycle manufacturers who learned their production techniques and
marketing strategies (e.g., the dealership system, annual models) during the bicycle craze of the 1890s. As the bicycle was then, so was
the automobile initially a plaything of the wealthy. The early sales
campaigns touted the automobile as a leisure device for touring,
joyriding, and racing. One advertising man wondered as late as
1906 whether “the automobile is to prove a fad like the bicycle or a
lasting factor in the industry of the country.”57
That the automobile had practical uses dawned on the industry
quickly. Especially after the success of the Ford Model T, advertisements began stressing themes such as utility and sociability-in particular, that families could be strengthened by touring together.
Publicists and independent observers alike praised the automobile’s
role in breaking isolation and increasing community life.5 As
with the telephone, automobile vendors largely followed a market57Among the basic sources on the history of the automobile drawn from are: J. B.
Rae, The AmericanAutomobile:A Brief History (Chicago, 1965); id., The Road and Car in
American Life (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); J. J. Flink, America Adopts the Automobile,
1895-1910 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970); id., The Car Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 1976);
and J.-P. Bardou, J.-J. Chanaron, P. Fridenson, and J. M. Laux, The AutomobileRevolution, trans. J. M. Laux (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982). The advertising man was J. H.
Newmark, “Have Automobiles Been Wrongly Advertised?” Printers’Ink 86 (February
5, 1914): 70-72. See also id., “The Line of Progress in Automobile Advertising,”
ibid., 105 (December 26, 1918): 97-102.
58G. L. Sullivan, “Forces That Are Reshaping a Big Market,” Printers’ Ink 92 (July
29, 1915): 26-28. Newmark (n. 57 above, p. 97) wrote in 1918 that it “has taken a quarter century for manufacturers to discover that they are making a utility.” A 1930s
study suggested that 80 percent of household automobile expenditures was for “family living”; see D. Monroe et al., FamilyIncomeand Expenditures.Five Regions, Part 2. Family Expenditures, Consumer Purchases Study, Farm Series, Bureau of Home
Economics, Misc. Pub. 465 (Washington, D.C., 1941), pp. 34-36. Recall the 1925 survey of women’s attitudes toward appliances (n. 41 above). The author of the report,
Federation President Mary Sherman, concluded that “Before toilets are installed or
washbasins put into homes, automobiles are purchased and telephones are connected
… [b]ecause the housewife for generations has sought escape from the monotony
rather than the drudgery of her lot” (p. 98). See also CountryLife and Ward (n. 37
above); E. de S. Brunner and J. H. Kolb, Rural Social Trends (New York, 1933); and
F. R. Allen, “The Automobile,” pp. 107-32 in F. R. Allen et al., Technologyand Social
Change (New York, 1957).
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Claude S. Fischer
ing strategy based on the experience of their “parent” technology;
they stressed a limited and familiar set of uses; and they had to be
awakened, it seems, to wider and more popular uses. The automobile producers learned faster.
No doubt other social changes also contributed to what I have
called the discovery of sociability, and other explanations can be offered. An important one concerns shifts in advertising. Advertising
tactics, as noted earlier, moved toward “softer” themes, with greater
emphasis on emotional appeals and on pleasurable rather than practical uses of the product. They also focused increasingly on women
as primary consumers, and women were later associated with telephone sociability.59 AT&T executives may have been late to adopt
these new tactics, in part because their advertising agency, N. W.
Ayer, was particularly conservative. But in this analysis, telephone advertising eventually followed general advertising, perhaps in part because AT&T executives attributed the success of the automobile
and other technologies to this form of marketing.60
Still, there is circumstantial and direct evidence to suggest that
the key change was the loosening, under the influence of public practices with the telephone, of the telegraph tradition’s hold on the telephone industry.
Conclusion
Today, most residential calls are made to friends and family,
often for sociable conversations. That may well have been true two
or three generations ago, too.61 Today, the telephone industry encourages such calls; seventy-five years ago it did not. Telephone salesmen then claimed the residential telephone was good for emergencies; that function is now taken for granted. Telephone salesmen
then claimed the telephone was good for marketing; that function
59Recall that, early on, women were associated in telephone advertising with emergencies, security, and shopping.
6On changes in advertising, see sources cited in n. 21 above. The comment on
N. W. Ayer’s conservatism comes from Roland Marchand (personal communication).
61It is difficult to establish for what purpose people actually use the telephone. A
few studies suggest that most calls by far are made for social reasons, to friends and
family. (This does not mean, however, that people subscribe to telephone service for
such purposes.) See Field Research Corporation, Residence CustomerUsage and Demographic CharacteristicsStudy: Summary, conducted for Pacific Bell, 1985 (courtesy R.
Somer, Pacific Bell); B. D. Singer, Social Functions of the Telephone(Palo Alto, Calif.:
R&E Associates, 1981), esp. p. 20; M. Mayer, “The Telephone and the Uses of
Time,” in Pool, Social Impact (n. 2 above), pp. 225-45; and A. H. Wurtzel and C.
Turner, “Latent Functions of the Telephone,” ibid., pp. 246-61.
The TelephoneIndustryDiscoversSociability
61
persists (“Let your fingers do the walking …. “) but never seemed
to be too important to residential subscribers.62The sociability function seems so obviously important today, and yet was ignored or resisted by the industry for almost the first half of its history.
The story of how and why the telephone industry discovered sociability provides a few lessons for understanding the nature of technological diffusion. It suggests that promoters of a technology do not
necessarily know or determine its final uses; that they seek problems or “needs” for which their technology is the answer (cf. the
home computer business); but that consumers may ultimately determine those uses for the promoters. And the story suggests that, in
promoting a technology, vendors are constrained not only by its technical and economic attributes but also by an interpretation of its
uses shaped by its and their own histories, a cultural constraint that
can be enduring and powerful.
62A 1934 survey found that up to 50 percent of women respondents with telephones were “favorable” to shopping by telephone. Presumably, fewer actually did
so; see J. M. Shaw, “Buying by Telephone at Department Stores,” Bell TelephoneQuarterly 13 (July 1934): 267-88. This is true despite major emphases on telephone shopping in industry advertising. See also Fischer, “Women” (n. 41 above).
Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988)