Harmon’s Histories: Number, please? Cellphones lack human touch
By Jim Harmon
I bought a new cellphone the other day, although I’m not sure why. Well, my old phone died – there’s that. I hardly ever use a cellphone. I prefer my home phone.
I know. I’m a dinosaur. But when I leave my home – I really want to leave my home. I don’t wish to take my home with me. I sense the rest of the world doesn’t understand. They expect to be able to reach me anywhere, anytime, 24/7/365.
Sorry. My cell phone spends most of its time abandoned on my home-office desk. Sometimes I don’t notice text messages for a number of days. That seems to rankle those of younger generations, who solely live in the hyper-present. Hmm. Did I just invent a new phrase?
As I wrote nearly a decade ago, old Alexander Graham Bell's landlines are out of favor now.
But they had a long run. Bell's invention has been around since 1876.
It changed our ancestors' lives and ours. From the day Bell uttered the famous line, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you,” it seems everyone wanted to talk.
Within months of Bell's famous call to Mr. Watson, Montana farmers were stringing lines to talk with neighbors.
In early 1877, The New North West newspaper in Deer Lodge explained to its readers the basic operation of the telephone. Calling it a "simple affair," the paper said, through a combination of magnets, coils, insulated wires and a thing called a diaphragm, the human voice could be transformed into "undulations that then travel through the wire (to) the coils of an instrument of similar construction..." at the other end.
The Rocky Mountain Husbandman newspaper in Diamond City, MT., experimented with a line from the office to the editor's home, calling the "contrivance...simple, novel, and afford(ing) much amusement."
The Avent Courier newspaper in Bozeman told of experiments by "Professor Rolph in Helena and Professor Moore in Deer Lodge" linking phones between the two locations. "Loud tones were used at first, but eventually (two men) conversed in ordinary conversational tones and each other could hear the other distinctly."
The Madisonian newspaper reported, "The telephone is all the 'rage' in Virginia (City) now."
Copper King William Clark ordered equipment so he could install a line between his residence and his bank, as well as with the Dexter mill. The primitive devices rented for $50 a year.
Across the country, entrepreneurs were setting up so many Bell-licensed co-ops and exchanges that problems arose. Eventually, AT&T was created to link all the local Bell companies.
Missoula's first telephones were installed in 1879, with the first exchange opening in 1884.
Back then, you could only make calls between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., with the exchange closed during both lunch and dinner hours.
By the early 1890s, the Western Democrat newspaper reported the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone exchange in Missoula had erected about "ten miles of pole lines, carrying 100 miles of wires."
The paper reported there were 600 calls a day "or 219,000 per annum (with) subscribers now number(ing) over 100." The Missoula exchange was connected with a statewide system of long-distance lines reaching as far as Anaconda, Helena, Big Timber and Cooke City.
Competition – and tension – developed as soon as the Bell patents expired in 1893. Independents popped up all over the country, including Montana. The Bell system countered with propaganda campaigns and refusal to connect with some independents or sell telephone equipment to non-Bell outfits.
In 1914, Missoula's Mountain States Telegraph and Telephone company merged with the Montana Independent Telephone, ending what Missoulian reporter George P. Stone called "the tension which has been felt locally."
As rapid as telephonic expansion seemed, there were exceptions. Areas like Arlee, Helmville, Ovando and Potomac didn't have telephones until the late 1950s, when the Blackfoot Co-op finally reached those households.
We marched through the 20th century, morphing from regulation to de-regulation; from wires to wireless; from cellphones to smartphones and now, to Dick Tracy-like wrist communicators.
But we lost the human touch. "Number, please?" These days, many young folks don't know what a telephone operator is...er...was.
Yes Virginia, there were actually people who physically "connected" your phone calls by plugging your phone wire, at a switchboard, into the slot assigned to the party you wanted to reach.
Today, if you need a number you simply talk to the watch on your forearm and a pleasant enough, computer-generated voice responds. Convenient, yes. But it's not the same.