Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You

The telephone switchboard was a real wonder of technology and laid the groundwork for the next generation of connectivity. Learn how these things worked today. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:12Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. Ring, ring. There's Jerry, and this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  That's right. This is a Kyle joint, so a little British factor too in here, because Kyle likes to throw those in, because that's where he lives.

• 1:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he keeps mentioning fish and chips every, like, few paragraphs.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's a chippy?

• 1:33Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  We are going to be talking about telephone switchboards, some overlap with a couple of other episodes we've done. But this is all about the, you know, the advancement of the telephone system in the United States and abroad, and how the telephone switchboard was a crucial, crucial part of that.

• 1:52Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah. Um, first I want to give a shout out. If you ever find yourself in the town of Maitland, Florida, go to the Maitland, um, I think, well, it's the telephone museum. There's probably not more than one telephone museum in Maitland, even though I can't remember the name of it. Just ask somebody for directions there and they will tell you, or ask your app. Regardless, it's really cute. Um, it's not the biggest museum you'll ever find, but it's a very dedicated museum.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  I love old telephones. I would like to check that out.

• 2:23Josh Clark?

  Oh, you'd love this. There's a bank of wall telephones from the seventies, probably. And each one's a different color. It's very pretty.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 2:32Josh Clark?

  Um, yeah, you would, you would like this place, Chuck. It, it, it reminded me that something that was just such an integral part of our life is a completely obsolete, outdated antique technology. It does, there's basically no reason for it to exist any longer, and it may not, as far as I know.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54Josh Clark?

  I think you still have to have it to connect some, um, alarm, home alarm systems, maybe, but that's the only application I know of anymore.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Actually, you know what? That's, we had that for that, a landline for that reason for a while, but no longer.

• 3:10Josh Clark?

  I mean, I don't, I just don't think that there's any reason for them to exist any longer. I'm sure I'm wrong, but that's the best I can come up with is home alarm systems.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  I guess nostalgia is not a good enough reason, huh?

• 3:21Josh Clark?

  To keep this amazing network of technologies still around?

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, man. I mean, lots of, it's dumb. It's just my, our, our Gen X selves, like, uh, looking back with joy about walking around your bedroom with a long phone cord and,

• 3:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  or, or your mom literally being able to go to every point in the kitchen with like a 25-foot stretchy phone cord that you're ducking under and it's knocking things over and.

• 3:48Josh Clark?

  That's right. There goes the flower.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Wireless is better, I know.

• 3:53Josh Clark?

  I don't think it's just nostalgia. I think there is some real value or

• 4:00Josh Clark?

  it's not pointless to look at the telephone system that was created over the decades in the 20th century and just be impressed. Like, it wasn't a marvelous technology and it did some amazing stuff while it was around. It's just, we've moved on technology-wise. But that doesn't mean you can't appreciate it.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder if they're safer for like government systems, you know? Because you literally have to tap the wire physically. It's not just in the airwaves.

• 4:32Josh Clark?

  True that.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  So, I don't know.

• 4:34Josh Clark?

  I don't know either, but that's a great point.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  I'm curious. Surely someone knows. But let's talk about Alexander Graham Bell, because he is the OG. He's the guy that invented, well, patented the telephone at least.

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  And from Boston in 1876, where he was not trying to invent a telephone. He was trying to work out the problem with the electrical telegraph, which was, it was just getting bunched up. Too many people are sending too many, you know, telegraphs. And it's a problem. So, there's too much traffic. So, all of a sudden, Bell, who was a sound guy anyway, realized that you could send tones. And once he realized he could send a tone along a wire, he was like, "Oh, forget the telegraph. I'm gonna come up with the harmonic telegraph. And one day, I'm gonna speak to somebody on the other end of a wire."

• 5:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Not dots and dashes, but hey's and how are you's.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Or ahoy's.

• 5:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, right. So, he did this in 1876, right? He set out to figure out the telegraph clogging and invented the phone pretty quickly. The next year, he founded Bell Telephone Company. And the first permanent telephone wires were in Boston, I think, that same year, right? So, we had telephone service set up within a year of him inventing the telephone. One of the other things, too, is he helped kind of spread telephone technology by giving lectures that people would come see and then go off and like build their own versions that would work. But initially, when you were talking to somebody on a telephone,

• 6:15Josh Clark?

  your telephone was physically connected to their telephone, which made a lot of sense initially. But if you want to talk to more than one friend in town, you need another wire to connect your phone to somebody else's telephone and so on and so forth. And if you just kind of follow that logical path, you very quickly realize like, man, we're going to need a lot of wires to connect one person to everybody else and everybody else to that one person. It's just, that's the definition of exponential growth. And so they figured out they needed a different way rather than connecting each telephone physically. And that's where they came up with the concept of the switchboard.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  That's right. What if all of the calls went into a central location? And there was a human being there that would connect those two wires? It's a very elegant, very simple sort of system. It's, you know, it's literally connecting two calls by, you know, by connecting them, by plugging them into the same. What would you even call that?

• 7:18Josh Clark?

  Switchboard jack?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, the same jack. The first switchboard commercially was in 1878. So only, geez, like a year after the Bell Telephone Company was founded. This is in New Haven, Connecticut. And it connected 21 different subscribers in this case. And this is a very old fashioned, primitive thing. Before long, they were like, why don't we wrap these cords in cloth? It's like insulated. And why don't we make the, you know, the board look a little nicer? And we'll call them a cord board, but everyone's still going to call them a switchboard.

• 7:55Josh Clark?

  Yes, one thing really quick too. When some of these first commercial switchboards popped up in towns, like the one in New Haven that I guess George Coy was the inventor of. They would publish phone books. And the first phone books would be like one page with like 50 people's names on. Because when you called, you would call and your call would be connected by an operator. So you'd pick up your phone and the only person it would go to is the operator of the switchboard. And you would say, I want to talk to Chuck Bryant, please. And the operator would look up where your jack was that went to your house. And then now connected the call, right?

• 8:36Josh Clark?

  So they would plug my phone cord into your phone jack and connect our call. But first, they would, right, first, they would, they would plug in themselves to you and say, Josh Clark calling for Charles Bryant. And you would say, tell him I'm in the shower.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  I'll accept the call.

• 8:53Josh Clark?

  They would plug back into mine and be like, he's in the shower. He can't talk right now. And I would say, tell him that I know he's not in the shower and hang up angrily.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  You're not too far off. That is if my jack is on that board. If it was a big enough community, that switchboard operator might say, I don't have Chuck on this board, but there, he's on another board, so I'm going to contact that switchboard and, you know, patch it in that way. So.

• 9:20Josh Clark?

  But first, they spend 10 minutes going down each jack like Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Well, early on, they just knew, you know, in a 21-person situation, they just knew everybody. In fact, for a little while, they weren't even saying phone numbers. They were just like Chuck Bryant.

• 9:36Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly. And one of the other things about a central switchboard too, is there's a phone company employee connecting calls. And so now you can track things more easily and hence bill people more accurately too.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, because this is when making a call costs money. And up until, I mean, not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, making a long distance call costs extra money. So you had to bill people and it was pretty ingenious. Things started growing, growing, growing. You said the word exponentially, and that is the truth because between 1880 and just 13 years later, we went from 60,000 phones to 260. And then just another 10 years later, there were 3 million phones in the United States only. Kyle points out, and in the UK, they were a little bit behind us. 1914, there were fewer than two telephones per 100 people compared to 10 in the US. But they eventually caught up too.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  And everyone had phones.

• 10:39Josh Clark?

  I'm sure there's some listener that's like, I didn't have a phone when I was a kid.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Well, maybe.

• 10:46Josh Clark?

  So as more and more people had phones, more and more jacks were required in switchboards. So you're getting bigger switchboards, more switchboards. It became kind of a mess in and of itself, as we'll see. That was known as the switchboard problem, right?

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:02Josh Clark?

  But then finally, they figured out, okay, there's some, there's a few tweaks we can do here that are gonna allow us to just, to support this growth. Cause the phone companies weren't like, whoa, we're good at 10,000 subscribers. Let's just hold here. They wanted everybody to have a phone so they could bill everybody for using those phones. And also, America, the United States of the world, I think, was like, we really wanna be able to pick up the phone and talk to people. It was a huge, enormous technology that completely changed how humans interact with one another. So everybody wanted a phone. Phone company wanted to give people phones. The big sticking point was how you can connect that many people in an efficient way and not

• 11:45Josh Clark?

  just keep adding switchboard after switchboard after switchboard.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, something else we should point out too, is this is a time where the phone company controlled the phones themselves. So you couldn't just go to a store and buy some cool looking Mickey Mouse phone or a Garfield phone.

• 12:01Josh Clark?

  Man.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Or what did I have?

• 12:03Josh Clark?

  Football phone from Sports Illustrated.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  I had, I did get that for free, actually, but those were always garbage. Those are the ones that looked like push button, but when you hit it, it dialed.

• 12:12Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Do you remember those? You know, it had the keypad, but when you hit nine, it went.

• 12:18Josh Clark?

  No, I don't remember that.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  It was a big bait and switch.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  But you rented your phone at the time. I guess if you had a, or maybe they didn't sell them at all at first, but I know for a long time, they rented phones to people like.

• 12:31Josh Clark?

  Into the seventies, right?

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like you used to rent your, some people still probably rent their modem from their cable or whatever, their wifi provider. Am I saying all the wrong words?

• 12:42Josh Clark?

  No, I think you got it. Provider.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:45Josh Clark?

  Our internet service provider ISP.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. But yeah, anyway, they were controlling the flow of money in more ways than just the bill. They wanted as many people to have phones as possible because they were renting those phones and eventually, I guess, selling those phones.

• 12:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I remember Yumi has a story from when she was a kid of going to the phone store with her dad and renting a Prince's phone, like a pink phone.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  It's so weird.

• 13:10Josh Clark?

  It is weird. It's just weird to think of, but like you said, that was a way for them to control revenue even more. And also, I think it made it more available to more people because I think even into the 60s, the 70s, phones were still kind of expensive to make. And so they were expensive to buy, so you could lease them. But I think ultimately, it was really the phone companies. And they were able to get away from this, as we'll see, because for years and years and years, there was essentially a monopoly on the phone in the United States.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  That's right. But I got us a little off track. You were talking about some new techniques because these switchboards, all of a sudden, were getting just more and more ubiquitous. And they started to get a little clunky in like how long it would take to connect calls. So one of the things they did is came up with a concept of what's called the divided exchange, which is really just an organizational, structural thing where people got more specialized. You might have operators just answering the phone. You might have people just connecting instead of the person going, oh, hey, Josh, let me see if Chuck's available. Like, all of that was really streamlined eventually until they came up with what was called the Express system

• 14:24Speaker 02

  that had a lot of letter B boards that converged on a letter A board. And there was an operator linking between those two.

• 14:35Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah. So the A person, the person at the A board would be like, oh, yeah, Josh is on B board 72, but Chuck is on B board 3, so I need to be the one that connects B board 72 and B board 3 for this call. These are human beings doing this and expected to do it really fast, too, as we'll see.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, they also just improved the signals, like signal strength. All of a sudden, the operators weren't yelling at each other, which can cause just chaos in a room with a bunch of switchboard operators.

• 15:07Josh Clark?

  What's the number for Domino's?

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So just improving the signal really optimized how those things function such, even just making the little signal lamps, the little lights brighter, responding to the current in the line. Everything just got a little better.

• 15:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and the current in the line was a huge thing, too. Not only would it light up the little light above your jack showing the operator, like, oh, this guy's trying to call right now, but it also allowed for telephones to carry a little bit of a current, which was how the voice was broadcast anyway, but it was one more thing that they controlled. They powered everything, which made the whole thing more efficient. Rather than having a bunch of batteries out by the lines, there was a central group of batteries and power generation that came from the main office, too. So when you put all this stuff together, they got really good at analyzing traffic, too, to kind of put resources where it needed at any given time.

• 16:04Josh Clark?

  You put all this together for the next four, five decades, the phone system just kept expanding and expanding and expanding. But there was always a frontier. There was, these were individual cities, individual towns. And if the town or the city was close enough to another town or city, they would probably be able to connect. But for the most part, these phone systems are growing intra, well, internally. Let's just say that. I almost got really fancy for a second, but I'm just gonna say they were internal into each town, growing and growing and growing, connecting subscribers. But each town was kind of like its own isolated island of telephony.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so obviously, the next thing to conquer would be the LD, long distance. At the time, if you wanted to pick up a phone in New York City and call San Francisco, you couldn't do it.

• 16:59Josh Clark?

  No, but I say we take a break, leave this as a cliffhanger, and when we come back, we'll say whether or not they were eventually able to do it. Stuxnet.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Who's Stuxnet?

• 17:09Josh Clark?

  Say it one more time. Stuxnet.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  I don't know what that is.

• 17:11Josh Clark?

  You know what Stuxnet is.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Is that in this? Stuxnet.

• 17:13Josh Clark?

  Stuxnet. It's a great name.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, quit saying Stuxnet.

• 17:16Josh Clark?

  That's the name of it.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  I know.

• 17:17Josh Clark?

  It's a great name.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  All right.

• 17:19Josh Clark?

  Stuxnet with an X.

• 17:24Speaker 02

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• 18:46Josh Clark?

  Okay, so when they finally did start connecting towns, they would use switchboards, right? So your town would be connected to another town by a switchboard. They used trunk lines. These were like these longer, stronger lines that people would use to connect one town to another. And let's say that you were in Topeka and you wanted to talk to Tacoma, Washington. Okay, two great T-towns. Sure. When you picked up the phone in Topeka and said, "Give me Tacoma", they would, this would set off a chain reaction of connections, carried out by human operators, who would connect to this switchboard, and this switchboard connected to, I don't know, Kansas City,

• 19:31Josh Clark?

  and then that switchboard connected to Erie, Pennsylvania. That'd be going the wrong way. Munchie in the Indiana. Is it Muncie?

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:42Josh Clark?

  Boy, this is going terribly. But I think it really gets, it really illustrates how kludgy the whole thing was. And then it would go from Muncie slash Munchy to Gurry, Indiana.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 19:53Josh Clark?

  And then to, I don't know, onwards and upwards until finally, switchboard after switchboard after switchboard after switchboard, town to town to town. It would finally connect all the way through all these towns from switchboard to switchboard, you to your friend Tacoma who wasn't even home.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  You were using the Miles Davis rebreathing technique?

• 20:16Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  You're breathing through your nose, so you don't have to stop talking.

• 20:20Josh Clark?

  I just didn't breathe.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, that's the dizzy Gillespie method.

• 20:24Josh Clark?

  Speaking of dizzy.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Yes, it's amazing. I guess we'll spoil it and say eventually, New York was able to talk to San Francisco. And in fact, I think that was, well, no, the first long line was between New York and Philly in 1885. New York to San Francisco finally came around, finally, I say, in 1915, which is incredible.

• 20:50Josh Clark?

  You know, for that call, they brought Alexander Graham Bell out of retirement because he'd left a super big fat rich man by this time. And had him talk to Watson. Remember, the first phone call was room to room between him and Watson. He said, Watson, come here, I need you. And on this huge monumental historical phone call from New York to San Francisco, Bell said, Watson, come here, I need you again. And Watson said, I will, but it's going to take me a week to get there.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Watson, that's so Watson.

• 21:23Josh Clark?

  It totally is Watson.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Classic Watson. You know, it didn't just work with like magic. You can't send something that you're used to going like a mile or let's say 100 miles, all of a sudden sending it, you know, close to 3,000 miles. So they had boosters, they had loading coils, which are electromagnets that would boost the transmission. They had these vacuum tubes that would regenerate a weak signal. Those were called repeaters. So it needed help along the way to finally get, you know, across country. But the fact that they were able to do that by 1915 is remarkable. While this is happening, I mean, I think you said that he was, Bell was an old fat rich guy by this point. That is because.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Through even the late 1800s, Bell consistently swatted away rivals with lawsuits, with shutting people down, with saying like, no, you know, I have a patent here till 1894. So like, there are people out there building their own phones and even their own switchboards, but like, I'm gonna go after them as fast as I can build them.

• 22:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they had detectives that would go bust down doors and confiscate bogus phones, which were phones that weren't part of the Bell network, which again, held a patent. Then even after the patent expired, they would just sue anybody and everybody. They would bribe officials to keep new phone companies from being allowed to develop or found themselves. It was really ruthless. And one of the reasons it was ruthless is because JP Morgan by this time was the head of either AT&T or Bell's Board of Directors. And Bell eventually bought AT&T and just consolidated, consolidated, consolidated. They would either, following JP Morgan's typical example, they would either buy up

• 23:12Josh Clark?

  the competition or crush them out of existence if the competition didn't want to sell at AT&T Bell's price. So this is just how it was. Like, I don't remember what year the US government finally stepped in and broke up Bell into smaller versions of itself, but it was a monopoly, a government sanctioned monopoly for decades. And in some ways, this was good because in other cases where like, local phone companies were allowed to compete, it was super kludgy. Sometimes you had to subscribe to two different companies to be able to call two different friends, depending on who they were subscribed to. The rates were all over the place. There

• 23:55Josh Clark?

  was very little regulation. So having this monopoly was good in some ways, but in others, monopolies typically overall are not good for the health of an economy.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and AT&T, American Telephone and Telegraph, we should point out that they were approached before that patent expired. And the reason they were initially approached was, I mean, it was part of the plan just to, you know, snap up other companies. But part of it was, hey, I need AT&T to help me build these long-distance lines. Right. Because that's the future. If we control long distance and no one else has it, then we can, even if new companies pop up after this patent expires, if we're the only ones doing long distance, then we can lease those to other companies, or not lease them Yes. to other companies. Huge, huge point. Yeah. Can we talk about phone numbers real quick?

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we should talk about phone numbers. Because I don't have a complete handle on, because how phone numbers expanded was, you know, it wasn't just one exact, uniform way in every place. It kind of depended on how big the city was, as far as how many digits they were using and stuff like that. So what I've gathered is that from the beginning, it was two to four numbers, depending on how big your community was. Sure. So you could literally be living in a community and your phone number was...

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Seven. Yeah, it could be 07, I guess. Well, I don't know if zero counts, but let's just say 11. No, I want to say seven. Okay, your phone number's seven, mine's 11. Okay. We should get together and make a convenience store. But as things started to expand and grow, obviously, you needed more and more numbers. And I remembered seeing in like, even like Happy Days and stuff and TV shows, like into the 60s and 70s, when they would say, you know, a word followed by numbers. Give me Klondike 5,6,000. Exactly. And so, from, this is how I understand it, is, and if you found something different, let me know. But Klondike would have been the...

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Either the switchboard or the central, you know, hub for that town. And then whatever the numbers you said would be the actual number.

• 26:05Josh Clark?

  That's 55.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, as that got busier, cities started using what they called 2L and 4N format. So two letter, four number.

• 26:14Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  So it'd still be Klondike 5555 or whatever, but it would be KL. And then you would use the four numbers. And then eventually it was, I think, 2L, 5N. They just kept taking away letters and adding numbers.

• 26:30Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  The bigger and bigger your city got.

• 26:32Josh Clark?

  Right. And the reason why, like, if you have four numbers, you can accommodate up to 10,000 subscribers. But as you add more and more numbers, or even letters, then you can add more and more people. And so I think that the numbers or the letters eventually, or initially, were like, that went to this particular switchboard station. And that was this one group of people in town whose connections were all coming out of this one station. So if you ask for Klondike 5555, it took you to this one switchboard. And then that switchboard operator would find subscriber 5555 and connect it.

• 27:12Josh Clark?

  And the reason also I keep going to Klondike 5 is because that's the original 555 fake number in movies. Like, if you watch movies, they ask for Klondike 5 all the time. Like, that's the, that's the phone number. Because the, apparently the phone company set aside the 555 exchange for use by movies.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, which I was told recently in a script I wrote to take that out.

• 27:37Josh Clark?

  Oh, really? Did you tell them to go to hell?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, any kind of script note is just, there is no right answer. But this person said, yeah, it just, I don't, it bugs me because it always takes me out and makes me feel like I'm watching a movie. So I was like, oh, okay.

• 27:52Josh Clark?

  So did you or did you not tell them to go to hell with their script notes?

• 27:56Speaker 02

  I did not. I got a lot of good notes from this person, so.

• 27:58Josh Clark?

  All right.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  I was on their side.

• 28:00Josh Clark?

  Is this a bad actor?

• 28:03Speaker 02

  No, it was a good writer.

• 28:04Josh Clark?

  Okay. There's a big difference. So to get a little further, to wrap that up. So those letters were eventually overtaken by numbers. Because again, if you, or I don't even know if I said it and we edited it out. But if you look at an old phone, I think even a new phone still.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  You said it, yeah.

• 28:23Josh Clark?

  Okay. The numbers are associated with specific letters. So 2 is associated with ABC, 3 is associated with the EF and so on. So if it was Klondike, that's KL, both of those are on the 5. So eventually it just became 555, whatever the rest of the thing is. And when we went to all numbers, that was a big step in the direction of eventually phasing out switchboard operators.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, good. Then you went seven digits and then eventually in most places you needed the area code as well and we went to 10 digit.

• 28:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but area codes weren't around for a while. I think it was.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 29:02Josh Clark?

  Oh, I don't remember exactly when it was, but I'm looking. That's why I'm still kind of talking a little bit.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  I mean, we've talked about this before because we both have our phone numbers memorized growing up and it was definitely not an area code. 911 911 9, that was me.

• 29:18Josh Clark?

  I grew up with an area code.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 29:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  From the moment you could remember?

• 29:23Josh Clark?

  I don't know, you're right. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. There was just an exchange. It wasn't, yes, you're right. Mine was 3829040.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  All right.

• 29:30Josh Clark?

  Sorry.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  What if those two numbers called each other, like in some weird portal opened?

• 29:35Josh Clark?

  That would be pretty awesome. What would be through the portal? Either gnomes or robots. It's got to be one of the two. Really earthy or really futuristic?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Adam Curry?

• 29:45Josh Clark?

  Wait, wait, which one?

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Oh, Adam Curry. Dressed as a gnome.

• 29:50Josh Clark?

  Okay, thank you.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Okay. I knew you weren't going to be satisfied until I picked one of your two. Should we talk a little bit about who the switchboard operators were? All right, or should we take our break?

• 30:03Josh Clark?

  I feel like we went long before the first break, so let's keep going.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  All right, well, most of these switchboard operators were women. Initially, they tried teenage boys, but I love this little factoid Kyle dug up. Apparently, there was a quote that said, unfortunately, they matched insult for insult for Canadian boys that were operators. So if like, and as we'll see, they're, you know, people call up and be surly and are in a bad mood, or if it didn't work right, they'd be cussing.

• 30:33Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  And these teenage boys would give it right back to them.

• 30:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  And so customer service is suffering in the 1880s because all these, you know, wise-mouthed kids. So they started hiring mostly women. In the early 20th century, I think 80% of all operators were women. Here and abroad, they were called hello girls. Ironic, since apparently they weren't even allowed to say hello. We'll get to that in a second. And Emma Nutt was the first phone operator, switchboard operator hired by AGB in 1878 at a whopping wage of about a nickel an hour.

• 31:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is, even adjusted for inflation, that's only $1.50 an hour today.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:14Josh Clark?

  Pretty, pretty meager. But she was, she was a pioneer and probably one of the reasons why she kept her job was eventually it had a lot of prestige to it. It was one of the more respected jobs a woman can have, but it was also one of the very few jobs a woman could have. So women proved to be a fairly docile workforce because they had so few

• 31:39Josh Clark?

  choices, other choices for work. And so they were exploited to the bone as phone operators, sadly, as it turned out.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it took everything I had not to make a nut job. Joke.

• 31:54Josh Clark?

  Can we hear it?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  But I guess I sort of just did. Well, I don't know, her name was Emma Nutt, and everyone's like, I want, I want a nut job.

• 32:02Josh Clark?

  That was good.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 32:03Josh Clark?

  You got me.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  So here's the deal, though. It was very specific criteria. You couldn't just waltz in there and get this job because, like you said, there wasn't a lot of choice for women in the workplace. And eventually, they would pay them, you know, okay. Not as much as their male counterparts, of course, because that's just how things worked, very sadly, but it was a very... It was known as a pretty good job to get. In the US, you had to be well spoken. You had to be a high school graduate. In Canada, they sought women with good eyesight, no cough. You had to be of sufficient height and were physically fit in order to tackle the exacting work at the switchboard. And also, and this is in Canada, also a reference of moral character from their clergyman.

• 32:47Josh Clark?

  Well, this is to get a job as a switchboard operator.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. What about in the UK? Because that's pretty fun, too.

• 32:55Josh Clark?

  You were required to speak the King's English.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 32:58Josh Clark?

  And not in a Cockney way or a northern way.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:03Josh Clark?

  And so, women would accept these positions. Again, these were coveted positions. In some cases, they paid them and gave them financial freedom. They were looked upon with respect by their community. Like, to make it as an operator, even be hired as an operator, it told the rest of society, this one's a good egg, because we only hire the best eggs. One of the things, though, like you said, was that there were really strict rules on their behavior, how they comported themselves when speaking to customers, and then just how they even like sat and positioned themselves at their switchboard. There's a 1910 booklet that the Bell Company wrote that Kyle found, where they were saying,

• 33:48Josh Clark?

  like, do not answer these calls with hello. They said, would you rush into an office or up to the door of a residence and blurt out, hello, hello, who am I talking to? And when they put it like that, it's actually

• 34:00Speaker 02

  It's a little weird.

• 34:00Josh Clark?

  A reasonable thing. But what's funny also is there was a big debate initially when phones were invented between whether the proper way to answer a call was hello or hoi hoi. And Alexander Graham Bell was a hoi hoi boy. And Thomas Edison, who was his big rival in founding phone companies, he was a hello guy. And that's why you'll hear Mr. Burns say, hoi hoi, when he answers the phone. It's just going to show how ridiculously old he is.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, we talked about this on one episode. It was a long time ago, but I used to have ahoy ahoy written on my first flip phone. When you opened it up, the little home screen, because before they had pictures and graphics, just said ahoy ahoy.

• 34:46Josh Clark?

  Written, did you write it in nail polish?

• 34:49Speaker 02

  No, no, no, it was typed out and, you know, instead of like Chuck's phone or something.

• 34:53Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay. I never had a phone that had any feature like that.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you know, these were early flip phones.

• 34:59Josh Clark?

  I thought you actually wrote it on the screen.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. It was typed letters.

• 35:07Josh Clark?

  So, oh, there were a couple of things that I saw that were really harsh. There was an interview that I found, I think, American Experience, they did a documentary on the telephone. And they were interviewing like some of these original operators. And one of them was like, so they used Taylorism. So there was like five supervisors to every single like switchboard operator. And they would just hover over you like a hawk. They would constantly be like, come on, girls, faster, faster, that kind of stuff. And this woman was like, if you even lifted your head up from your switchboard, not even looked around, not even talked, like you just lifted your head up, four supervisors would be on you being like, what do you need? What's going on? There was another one that I think it was on history.com.

• 35:52Josh Clark?

  They were writing about telephone operators and they quoted from a woman who was like one of the original ones who said, I had to work 10 unpaid hours as punishment for a single giggle. Like, that's how. How just regulated the women operators were for decades and decades. That was just part of the job.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I never did telemarketing in college, but that was a big Dial America was a big job in Athens. I'm sure you remember, you probably worked for Dial America.

• 36:23Josh Clark?

  I didn't, but I worked for another company. I have a story about that.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a big, easy job to get in Athens and I'm sure many colleges. But the central benefit of any job like this is being able to put your phone, hand over the receiver and roll your eyes to the person next to you and go, oh, my God, you got to get a load of this guy. Or you should hear this lady's voice. Like, if you deny your worker that, then you're not going to have a happy workforce. That's the one perk you get when you're not on a, and right in front of someone is that you can say something quietly and have a quick laugh.

• 36:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they could not do that. They would get in trouble and possibly fired for that kind of stuff.

• 37:06Josh Clark?

  So actually, one of the cool things is they figured out that, okay, wait, there's thousands of us in this workforce, let's form a union. And they were told, no, they can't form a union. So they said, okay, we're going on strike. And I think in 1919, New England telephone operators walked out and just crippled the phone network for basically half of New England. And the company was very quick to be like, okay, why did you say you wanted to begin? And they went back to work. So that was pretty cool, but for the most part, they were treated rather poorly.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  They were, and they, in the face of, you know, like I said, some people would call in cursing. There were men who would use foul language. Sometimes they would get charged extra for their call. They would, sometimes people would call and say like, hey, do you know what time it is? Or do you know what goes in this recipe? Or do you know what time the train runs from the station?

• 37:57Josh Clark?

  Or does this shirt make me look fat?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And they're acting like.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Information, basically, rather than just connecting calls.

• 38:07Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  You know, I guess they weren't being as reined in everywhere, because, or maybe they were taught the customer is always right? I don't know.

• 38:16Josh Clark?

  They were, and there were, there was like five things you could say to a customer, no matter what they said to you, no matter how abusive they were, anything like that, you could say like, "Thank you," or something like that.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Saffron.

• 38:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, right. That was the safe word.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:30Josh Clark?

  The supervisor would come over and be like, "Hey, hey, what are you saying?"

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Well, if they got asked something in a recipe, and they can only say five things.

• 38:36Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  It really hems them in, so.

• 38:39Josh Clark?

  Are you allowed to leave if not say "saffron"?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Here's one fun little thing. In World War I, there were 223 American women who served in Europe as switchboard operators, because France's phone system was wrecked. So, the US Army Signal Corps literally built its own phone system, and had bilingual, American, switchboard operators working there, and sometimes giving like, really important, direct orders about, you know, bombings and raids and things like that.

• 39:10Josh Clark?

  Well, they would, they would pass them along. I don't know if they were making up the orders themselves.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Do you think anybody would have thought that?

• 39:17Josh Clark?

  I did.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  You thought that's what I was saying?

• 39:21Josh Clark?

  No, but it was still hilarious to hear you say it.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Exactly. But, this is the cool part. After 60 years, finally in 1979, these women were recognized as veterans.

• 39:34Josh Clark?

  I know, that was very cool. It's sad that it took that long, but at least they finally got there.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:40Josh Clark?

  I'm sorry, I keep imagining like, a whole cadre of operators just making up orders for bombings.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  This lady just said to storm the beach!

• 39:49Josh Clark?

  It's just chaos.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  All right, now we're gonna take our break. We're running a bit long, so we're gonna come back and finish up on how it all ended with automation, right after this.

• 40:16Speaker 02

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• 40:31Josh Clark?

  Well, with Base44, describe that in your own words. You don't need to know coding or programming. Then you just keep editing and refining it until it works exactly the way you want. Your build comes headache-free with built-in login, data storage, backend, and hosting. So what's the app you wish existed?

• 40:48Speaker 02

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• 40:59Speaker 03

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• 41:38Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck, so I think I said before that once they started going to all numeric, well, numbers, that was like a huge first step toward automating the system and eventually phasing out human operators. And one of the reasons why is because you can take numbers and you can quantify them essentially. And that's what those original phones, the rotary phones, then apparently the fake keypad phones would do. When you dialed a number, your finger would eventually hit a stop. For like a three, the stop was closer. For the zero, the stop was in eternity away. Because it, once you hit the stop, the dial would go back to the original position.

• 42:22Josh Clark?

  And as it did, it would put out, you know, three impulses, say, three electrical impulses when you dial the three. And what that did was it told the automated switches that were eventually invented to start paying attention and start dialing some numbers here, because I just sent some electrical impulses.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  That's right. I think you mean pulses, don't you?

• 42:46Josh Clark?

  What did I say? Pulses?

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Impulses?

• 42:49Josh Clark?

  Did I?

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:51Josh Clark?

  It's a little late in the day and my brain is mush from all the engineering week we've been doing.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Hey, I'm not just sitting here as correct you guy. I just, I think it's kind of funny if somebody would have written in and it's like, why are these phones having impulses?

• 43:04Josh Clark?

  No, hey, I, you got me back for the, the, the operators giving direction.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Here is where my mind exploded because I didn't learn this yesterday. Are you still liking that one?

• 43:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  This didn't, I didn't learn this yesterday, but I learned it, I think the last time you explained this, because we explained that in another episode about how you dial. Oh yeah, how you dial a rotary phone. I did not know that it was the retreat of that dial back to its original position was what was being quantified and, and pulsed.

• 43:37Josh Clark?

  You think it was the, the dial up? Like when you dialed it?

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, you put your finger in it and you dial the, the four over, you know, as a kid, you just think, well, like, yep, I'm hitting the four and I just take it out and it goes back to its place. It going back to its place is the key.

• 43:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Which I just.

• 43:53Josh Clark?

  I don't know if I knew that either though. It seems new to me, to me. So if I did explain it before, it didn't stick.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  It's pretty cool though. Didn't, I mean, that's just a fun little fact for anyone who still understands what those are.

• 44:05Josh Clark?

  One thing I do think we talked about in the phone freaking episode was the invention of the Stroger switch, which was invented by an undertaker named Alman Brown Stroger. And the reason that he came, like an undertaker in Kansas City, invented the automated phone switchboard because as legend has it, he was losing, um, business.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:29Josh Clark?

  To a rival undertaker whose wife was the town operator. So when people call up and said, undertaker, please, she would just route him to her husband's business and leave Stroger's business out. And he's like, you know what? I want to get rid of the operator. So he went and invented one of the more sophisticated pieces of technology that was around at the time. And this is in 1890 that he came up with the first automated switch and it is impressive.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that's the one that led to the rotary switch that we're talking about though, right?

• 45:00Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Do you know how his worked specifically?

• 45:03Josh Clark?

  I do, actually. It's really fascinating.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Well, let's hear it. We've got one minute.

• 45:08Josh Clark?

  All right. So let's say that you dialed that three, right? That first number, those three impulses. I think in slang, it's just called pulses.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 45:18Josh Clark?

  They went down the line and they hit the first switch. And they told the first switch, okay, we're going to three. And so that would narrow down the number of subscribers to this telephone switchboard, whose number started with three.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:32Josh Clark?

  And then the next number would come in, five.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:35Josh Clark?

  Right? Five impulses of electricity would come to the second switch. And it would tell that switch, okay, now we're just trying to get to the people whose first two numbers are three, five, and so on and so on, until finally, all, what, eight, no, yeah, eight, seven numbers.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:52Josh Clark?

  Were dialed. And so it led to the only person.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:56Josh Clark?

  Whose, whose phone line could possibly be connected to this specific circuit of seven numbers. And then it would connect the call from the caller to the callie.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Wow, that's pretty cool.

• 46:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's really amazing. This guy came up with this in 1890.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, we didn't even really mention, it seems obvious, but I guess we should say, the reason they were looking to phase out and go into automation is kind of like every reason always, is money, you know, less overhead. As more and more switchboards grew, you had, well, A, the switchboards cost a lot of money. They cost, you know, you had to have land and a building and you had to have people to operate them. And they just couldn't keep hiring more and more people. I think at one point, they said, you know, we need a million switchboard operators. And that just wasn't even a possibility at the time. So automation was always on the horizon. Interestingly, along those lines, long distance switching took a lot longer.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Like, it was into the late 1960s and even some places in the 70s, where you still had operators that had to connect long distance lines because it was, as Kyle said, that it was just no alternative to human intelligence. It was too complex at the time. But eventually, you know, they figured all that out.

• 47:14Josh Clark?

  But that meant that there were humans who were walking around knowing how to connect to Pika to Tacoma. They knew the combination of switches.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:25Josh Clark?

  To connect or the number of levers to pull, the number of like wishes to make. I don't know.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  So cool.

• 47:31Josh Clark?

  And they would, they knew how to connect a call like that and not just to Pika to Tacoma, like whatever city to whatever city, they just knew how to do it.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's impressive.

• 47:41Josh Clark?

  And I mean, that's, yeah, that's just an overlooked part of history that there were people walking around who knew how to do these complex algorithms, basically. And they were all different for depending on what city was calling what city. So that kept operators around for much longer than they would have been had long distance not existed because they got phased out at the local level. But for long distance calling, they were just too valuable to get rid of at the time.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  What happens when you dial zero today from a landline? Is there an operator?

• 48:11Josh Clark?

  Well, number one, there's no landlines. There's just, you get like an alarm, somebody's house alarm, I think, maybe.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:18Josh Clark?

  And then number two, there's no zero anymore. The Gen Z got rid of it.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  All right. Good deal.

• 48:24Josh Clark?

  So I think by the seventies, the whole thing was digitized. There was no corded switchboards any longer. But there were some like pockets of switchboards that were still around, right? That held on long beyond the time it was necessary.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a couple of competing last switchboard, last operators. One that you'll see a lot online as widely recognized, 1983 Bryant Pond, Maine. I think the specification here is it was the last hand cranked telephone system and switchboard. Like, you know, you, like you see in the old movies, there's a box on the wall and you go, you crank a thing.

• 49:06Josh Clark?

  Give me Klondike 5, 6,000.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. And Susan Gleins was the last operator there. London's, thank you, Kyle, was at Enfield. And this was 1960, I think, when it was retired. But the last caretaker telephone operator in the UK retired in 84. But then you found one in California that was 91.

• 49:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  And as best I could tell, that was a private, a sort of very small customer-based, private phone company.

• 49:41Josh Clark?

  In Kermin. And what was sweet was I saw one of the reasons that the owner of the company held on to human operators for so long was because there were so many migrants who lived in town that the phone operator was bilingual. He could help connect calls between people who spoke two different languages.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, all the, not even the final one, all of their operators were bilingual.

• 50:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, is that right?

• 50:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:08Josh Clark?

  Oh, very nice.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  I think that was their specialty. No, I'm serious.

• 50:13Josh Clark?

  That's what they said at the company picnic. That's our specialty.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  I think that's honestly, they had, most of their customer base were people with family in Mexico. And so they just had a niche, from what I understand.

• 50:24Josh Clark?

  I mean, I don't know why you're getting the impression that I don't believe you. I believe what you're saying.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Because you keep laughing at it, going, that's funny.

• 50:32Josh Clark?

  I'm still thinking about the operators telling everybody to bomb Rouen or something. You got anything else?

• 50:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 50:39Josh Clark?

  Big thanks to Kyle for helping us out with this one. It was very technical and complicated. And since I said technical and complicated, it's time for listener mail.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Here's our Joe Theismann follow-up. We got quite a few emails, and in fact, a few from people whose parents went to school with Joe Theismann, the former quarterback of the former Washington Redskins football team. Now the Commanders. Hey, guys, I used to freelance for a video company that did a lot of conferences. And one time, Joe Theismann was the keynote speaker. The way he told the story about his last name is as follows. Growing up, his dad was very firm that their last name was pronounced Theismann. Apparently, his dad would get quite cross when folks would pronounce it wrong. People often said it wrong, so Joe would call his dad and have him correct them.

• 51:27Speaker 04

  Dad, they said it wrong.

• 51:29Josh Clark?

  My dad's gonna sue you.

• 51:30Speaker 04

  He snapped my leg.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Uh, according to Joe's story, uh, when he was a candidate for the Heisman Trophy, his college coaches thought it would be better if it was pronounced Thiesman, to rhyme, obviously. So again, Joe called his dad to ask him, and his dad responded, "I've told you, it's Thiesman." So it sounds like Joe has made kind of a fun little apocryphal story about this, but it seems confirmed. It was Thiesman. Um, I heard it from the man's own mouth, and that's from Karen Gil Pinnington.

• 52:00Josh Clark?

  Very nice. Appreciate that big time. Who was it?

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Karen Gil Pinnington.

• 52:05Josh Clark?

  Thank you very much, Karen. I'm just gonna call him Karen.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 52:08Josh Clark?

  Um, if you want to get in touch with us like Karen did and give us a great story that kind of sums up, ties up, circles up, a story that we talked about, we love that kind of thing, you can send us an email to [email protected].

• 52:28Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 52:44Josh Clark?

  Curious people ask great questions, and here's one. What's something you wish there was an app for? Well, with Base44, you can build it yourself. Maybe it's a tool to organize a project, or track a hobby, or share knowledge, or solve a problem that's always bugged you. Just describe what you want in your own words, no coding required. Base44 handles the database, login, backend, and hosting. Try it for free. Go to base44.com to get started. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability,

• 53:28Josh Clark?

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• 53:43Speaker 03

  That sound? That's the National Squash League. Pro teams, the world's best players, and rally so fast you'll forget to breathe. Season four is in full swing, and every match streams free on YouTube. Big hits, bigger rivalries, and a front row seat from wherever you are. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.