WEBVTT - Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.920 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:14.080 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.799 ring Ring, there's Jerry and this is Stuff you should Know. 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:22.119 That's right. This is a Kyle joint. So there's a 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:25.040 little British factor to an ear is Kyle likes to 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:26.600 throw those in because that's where he lives. 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:30.680 Yeah, he keeps mentioning fish and chips every few paragraphs. 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:35.080 Yeah, what's a chippy. We are going to be talking 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:38.960 about telephone switchboards. Some overlap with a couple of other 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:43.000 episodes we've done, but this is all about the you know, 0:00:43.040 --> 0:00:46.360 the the advancement of the telephone system and the United 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.360 States and abroad, and how the telephone switchboard was a crucial, 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:50.559 crucial part of that. 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:54.120 Yeah. First, I want to give a shout out. If 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.040 you ever find yourself in the town of Maitland, Florida, 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:02.880 go to the Maitland I think, well, it's the Telephone Museum. 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:05.840 There's probably not more than one telephone museum in Maitland, 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:08.039 even though I can't remember the name of it. Just 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:11.680 ask somebody for directions there and they will tell you 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:15.720 or ask your app regardless. It's really cute. It's not 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:18.240 the biggest museum you'll ever find, but it's a very 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:19.399 dedicated museum. 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:22.400 I leveled telephones. I would like to check that out. 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.319 Oh you'd love this. There's a bank of wall telephones 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:30.080 from the seventies probably, and each one's a different color. 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:33.000 It's very pretty. Oh my god, Yeah, you would like 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:38.000 this place. Check it. It reminded me that something that 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:40.920 was just such an integral part of our life is 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:48.120 a completely obsolete, outdated antique technology. There's basically no reason 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:50.040 for it to exist any longer, and it may not 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:54.040 as far as I know. Yeah, I think you still 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:59.640 have to have it to connect some home alarm systems maybe, 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:02.240 but that's the only application I know of anymore. 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.000 Actually, you know what, that's We had that for that 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.519 landline for that reason for a while, but no longer. 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:11.000 I mean, I don't. I just don't think that there's 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.079 any reason for you to exist any Look, I'm sure 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:15.080 I'm wrong, but that's the best I can come up 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:17.000 with this home alarm systems. 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:19.120 I guess nostalgia's not a good enough reason. 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:24.600 Huh keeps this amazing network of technology still around? 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:29.079 Oh? Yeah, man, I mean lots of it's dumb. It's 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:33.400 just my my urgen x selves like looking back with 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.320 joy about walking around your bedroom with a long phone 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.320 cord and yeah, or your mom literally being able to 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.120 go to every point in the kitchen with like a 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:45.320 twenty five foot stretchy phone cord that you're ducking under 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:46.800 and it's knocking things over. 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:49.520 And that's right, there goes the flower. 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:50.720 Wireless is better. 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:54.640 I know it's I don't think it's just nostalgia. I 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:59.920 think there is some real value or there's it's not 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:04.320 pointless to look at the telephone system that was created 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.720 over the decades in the twentieth century and just be impressed, 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:12.320 like it wasn't a marvelous technology and it did some 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.400 amazing stuff while it was around. It's just we've moved 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:18.640 on technology wise. But that doesn't mean you can't appreciate it. 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:23.120 Yeah, I wonder if they're they're safer like for like 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:26.440 government systems, you know, because you literally have to tap 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:31.799 the wire physically. It's not just in the airwaves, true dat. 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:33.240 So I don't know. 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:36.360 I don't know either, but that's a great point. 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:39.960 I'm curious. Surely someone knows. But let's talk about Alexander 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:43.200 Graham Bell, because he is the og. He's the guy 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:47.040 that invented, well patented the telephone at least, right, and 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.400 from Boston in eighteen seventy six, where he was not 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:53.280 trying to invent a telephone. He was trying to work 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:57.240 out the problem with the electrical telegraph, which was it 0:03:57.280 --> 0:03:59.440 was just getting bunched up. Too many people are sending 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:05.120 too many you know, telegraphs, and it's a problem. So 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:07.920 there's too much traffic. So all of a sudden, Bell, 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:11.960 who was a sound guy anyway, realized that you could 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:15.520 send tones. And once he realized you could send a 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:19.600 tone along a wire, he was like, oh, forget the telegraph, 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.080 I'm going to come up with the harmonic telegraph and 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:24.320 one day I'm going to speak to somebody on the 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:25.240 other end of a wire. 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.960 Yeah, not dots and dashes, but hayes and how are 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:33.880 you is or a hoys? Yeah? Right. So he did 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:38.240 this in eighteen seventy six, right, He set out to 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:42.800 figure out the telegraph clogging and invented the phone pretty quickly. 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:47.120 The next year he found a Bell Telephone company, and 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:51.039 the first permanent telephone wires were in Boston, I think 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:54.000 that same year right, So we had telephone service set 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:58.360 up within a year of him inventing the telephone. One 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:00.320 of the other things too, is he helped kind of 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:04.880 spread telephone technology by giving lectures that people would come 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:07.440 see and then go off and like build their own 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:13.120 versions that would work. But initially, when you were talking 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:17.240 to somebody on a telephone, your telephone was physically connected 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:20.919 to their telephone, which made a lot of sense initially, 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:23.400 But if you want to talk to more than one 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:27.000 friend in town, you need another wire to connect your 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.640 phone to somebody else's telephone, and so on and so forth. 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.159 And if you just kind of follow that logical path, 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.520 you very quickly realize, like, man, we're going to need 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.400 a lot of wires to connect one person to everybody 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:44.480 else and everybody else to that one person. It just 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:48.200 that's the definition of exponential growth. And so they figured 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:50.720 out they needed a different way rather than connecting each 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:53.279 telephone physically, and that's where they came up with the 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:54.839 concept of the switchboard. 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.160 That's right, What if all of the calls went into 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.279 a central location and it was a human being there 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:04.640 that would connect those two wires. It's a very elegant, 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:09.560 very simple, sort of system. It's you know, it's literally 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:13.279 connecting two calls by you know, by connecting them by 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:17.200 plugging them into the same what would you even call 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:18.359 that board? 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:18.880 Jack? 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:23.760 Yeah, the same jack. The first switchboard commercially was in 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:28.359 eighteen seventy eight, so only geez, like a year after 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:32.080 the Bell Telephone Company was founded. This is in New Haven, Connecticut, 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:36.320 and it connected twenty one different subscribers in this case. 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.640 And this is a very old fashioned, primitive thing. Before 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:43.279 long they were like, why don't we wrap these chords 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:47.080 in cloth? It's like insulated, and why don't we make 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:50.479 the you know, the board look a little nicer and 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.120 we'll call them achrdboard. But everyone's still going to call 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:53.919 them a switchboard. 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:57.920 Yes. One thing really quick too. When some of these 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:01.040 first commercial switchboards popped up in town, like the one 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.839 in New Haven that I guess George Coy was the 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:07.960 inventor of, they would publish phone books, and the first 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.400 phone books would be like one page with like fifty 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:14.880 people's names on because when you called, you would call 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.040 and your call would be connected by an operator. So 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:20.520 you'd pick up your phone and the only person that 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:22.680 would go to is that operator or switchboard and you 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:24.960 would say I want to talk to Chuck Bryant please, 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:30.200 and the operator would look up where your jack was 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.440 that went to your house and then now connected the call. 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:38.720 Right So they would plug my phone cord into your 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:43.559 phone jack and connect our call. But first they would write. First, 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.600 they would they would plug in themselves to you and 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:50.280 say Josh Clark calling for Charles Bryant, and you would say, 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:51.360 tell him, I'm in the shower. 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:53.720 They would plug back. 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:55.400 Into mine and be like, he's in the shower, he 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:58.040 can't talk right now. And I would say tell him 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:00.320 that I know he's not in the shower and hang out, fang. 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:02.920 Really, you're not too far off. 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:03.760 Uh. 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.520 That is, if my jack is on that board. If 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:11.040 it was a big enough community, that switchboard operator might say, 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:13.760 I don't have Chuck on this board, but he's on 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:17.640 another board, so I'm going to contact that switchboard and 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:19.120 you know, patch it in that way. 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:21.760 So but first thing, spend ten minutes going down east 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.640 Jack like Chuck Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck Chuck Chuck. 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:27.000 Well, early on they just knew it, you know, in 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.560 a twenty one person situation, they just knew everybody. In fact, 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:32.760 that for a little while. They weren't even saying phone numbers. 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.079 They were just like Chuck Bryant, right exactly. 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.920 And one of the other things about a central switchboard too, 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:44.200 is there's a phone company employee connecting calls, and so 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.120 now you can track things more easily and hence bill 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:48.840 people more accurately too. 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.600 Yeah, because this is when making a call costs money, 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:54.920 and up until I mean not that long ago, in 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:56.920 the grand scheme of things, making a long distance call 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.760 costs extra money. So you had to build people, and 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:05.199 it was pretty ingenious. Things started growing, growing, growing, you 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:08.080 said the word exponentially, and that is the truth, because 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.760 between eighteen eighty and just thirteen years later we went 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:15.720 from sixty thousand phones to two sixty and then just 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:21.880 another ten years later there were three million phones in 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:25.080 the United States only Kyle points out, and then the 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.680 UK they were a little bit behind us. Nineteen fourteen 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:31.320 there were fewer than two telephones per one hundred people 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.520 compared to ten in the US, but they eventually caught 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:37.079 up to and everyone had phones. 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:42.079 That's right. I'm sure there's some listeners like I didn't 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:45.520 have a phone when I was a kid. Well maybe 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:48.120 so as more and more people had phones, More and 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:52.640 more jacks were required in switchboards, so you're getting bigger switchboards, 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:55.960 more switchboards. It became kind of a mess in and 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:58.800 of itself, as we'll see. That was known as the 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:04.120 switchboard problem, right. Yeah, But then finally they figured out, okay, 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:07.920 there's a few tweaks we can do here that are 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.760 going to allow us just to support this growth. Because 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.320 the phone companies weren't like, well, we're good at ten 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:17.760 thousand subscribers, let's just hold here. They wanted everybody to 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:19.800 have a phone so they could bill everybody for using 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:22.439 those phones. And also America or the United States of 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:24.960 the world, I think, was like, we really want to 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:26.880 be able to pick up the phone and talk to people. 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:32.679 It was a huge, enormous technology that completely changed how 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:36.200 humans interact with one another. So everybody wanted a phone. 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.120 Phone company wanted to give people phones. The big sticking 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:42.600 point was how you can connect that many people in 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.520 an efficient way and not just keep adding switchboard after 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:46.920 switchboard after switchboard. 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:49.520 Yeah. And you know something else we should point out too, 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:54.400 is this is a time where the phone company controlled 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.839 the phones themselves, and so you can just go to 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.000 a store and buy some cool looking Mickey mouse phone 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:05.120 or a Garfield phone or illustrated I had a I 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:07.760 did get that for free, actually, but those are always garbage. 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:09.679 Those are the ones that look like push button but 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:10.880 when you hit it, it dialed. 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:12.600 Oh really, do. 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:15.439 You remember those who you know it had the keypad, 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:16.600 but when you hit nine, it. 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.080 Went No, I don't remember that. 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:23.800 It was a big bait and switch. But you rented 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:26.000 your phone at the time, I guess you had a 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:27.840 or maybe they didn't sell them at all at first, 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:29.760 but I know for a long time they rented phones 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:32.800 to people, like into the seventies, right, yeah, I mean 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.520 like you used to rent your Some people still probably 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.920 rent their modem from their cable or whatever their Wi 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:41.520 Fi provider. Saying all the wrong words. 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:45.320 No, I think you got it provider, yeah, or internet 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:47.760 is Internet Service provider ISP. 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.760 That's okay. But yeah, anyway, they were they were controlling 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:53.880 the flow of money and more ways than just the bill. 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:56.360 They wanted as many people to have phones as possible 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:58.200 because they were renting those phones and eventually I guess 0:11:58.200 --> 0:11:58.840 selling those phones. 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:01.320 Yeah. I remember. Umi has a story from when she 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:03.720 was a kid of going to the phone store with 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:06.800 her dad and renting a princess phone. 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:08.960 Like I remember it, it's so weird. 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:12.400 It is weird. It's just weird to think of. But 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:14.200 like you said, that was a way for them to 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.960 control revenue even more. And also I think it made 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:21.920 it more available to more people, because I think even 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:24.800 into the sixties to seventies, phones were still kind of 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:28.720 expensive to make, and so they were expensive to buy, 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:32.720 so you could lease them. But I think ultimately it 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:34.720 was it was really the phone companies, and they were 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:37.040 able to get away from this, as we'll see, because 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:39.680 for years and years and years there was essentially a 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:43.280 monopoly on the phone in the United States. 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.560 That's right, But I got us a little off track. 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:50.319 You were talking about some new techniques because the switchboards, 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:53.480 all of a sudden, we're getting just more and more ubiquitous, 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:56.760 and they started to get a little clunky in like 0:12:56.800 --> 0:12:59.679 how long it would take to connect calls. So one 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:01.200 of the things they did is came up with the 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.760 concept of what's called the divided exchange, which is really 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:08.800 just an organizational structural thing where people got more specialized. 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:12.280 You might have operators just answering the phone. You might 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:15.760 have people just connecting instead of the person going, oh hey, Josh, 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:18.120 let me see if Chuck's available. Like, all of that 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.640 was really streamlined eventually until they came up what was 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:25.439 called the Express system that had a lot of letter 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:30.000 B boards that converged on a letter A board and 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.319 there was an operator linking between those two. 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:36.720 Right, Yeah, so the A person, the person at the 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:39.240 A board would be like, oh, yeah, Josh is on 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.760 B board seventy two, but Chuck is on B board three, 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:45.400 So I need I need to be the one that 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:48.480 connects B board seventy two in B board three for 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:51.960 this call. These are human beings doing this and expected 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:54.040 to do it really fast too, as we'll see. 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:58.120 Yeah. They also just improved the signals, like signal strength. 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.960 All of a sudden, operators weren't like yelling at each 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:04.679 other and you know which can cause just chaos in 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:06.480 a room with a bunch of switchboard operators. 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:08.120 What's the number for dominos? 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:13.760 Yeah, exactly. So just improving the signal really optimized how 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.400 those things function such, you know, even just making the 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:20.040 little signal lamps a little lights brighter, right, responding to 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:22.000 the current and the line, like everything just got a 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:22.480 little better. 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:24.520 Yeah, and the current in the line was a huge 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:26.640 thing too. Not only would it light up the little 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.240 light above your jack showing the operator like, oh, this 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:34.040 guy's trying to call right now, but it also allowed 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:37.120 for telephones to carry a little bit of a current, 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:40.640 which was how the voice was was broadcast anyway. But 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.880 it was one more thing that they controlled. They powered everything, 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:46.480 which made the whole thing more efficient. Rather than having 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:48.880 a bunch of batteries out by the lines, there was 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:52.800 a central group of batteries and power generation that came 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.080 from the main office too. So when you put all 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:58.560 this stuff together, they got really good at analyzing traffic 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.680 to to kind of put resources, you know, where it 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.480 needed at any given time. Put all this together. For 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:08.080 the next four or five decades, the phone system just 0:15:08.160 --> 0:15:11.440 kept expanding and expanding and expanding, but there was always 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:16.920 a front tier there was. These were individual cities, individual towns, 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:18.840 and if the town or the city was close enough 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:22.040 to another town or city, they would probably be able 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:24.680 to connect. But for the most part, these phone systems 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:29.720 are growing intra well internally, let's just say that I 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:32.200 almost got really fancy for a second, but I'm just 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:35.040 gonna say they were internal into each town, growing and 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.240 growing and growing, connecting subscribers. But each town was kind 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:42.280 of like its own isolated island of telephony. 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:47.520 Yeah, and so obviously the next thing to conquer would 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:52.360 be the LD long distance. At the time, if you 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:55.040 wanted to pick up a phone in New York City 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:58.000 and call San Francisco, you couldn't do it. 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:00.680 No, But I say we take a break, leave this 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.480 as a cliffhanger, and when we come back, we'll say 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:09.240 whether or not they were eventually able to do it. Stuck. 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:12.600 You know what, Stucks. 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:17.040 It's a great name. That's the name of it. It's 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:32.880 a great name, all right, Stuck's net with with an X. Okay. 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:38.600 So when they finally did start connecting towns, they would 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:42.000 use switchboards, right, so your your your town would be 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:44.960 connected to another town by a switchboard. They used trunk lines. 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:48.520 These are like these longer, stronger lines that people would 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:52.080 use to connect one town to another. And let's say 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:55.680 that you were in Topeka and you wanted to talk to. 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:01.360 Tacoma, Washington, Okay, two great tee towns. 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:03.800 Sure, when you picked up the phone and Topeka and 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:07.600 said give me Tacoma, uh, they would this would set 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:11.359 off a chain reaction of connections carried out by human 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:15.159 operators who would connect to this switchboard and the switchboard 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:18.439 connected to I don't know, Kansas City, and then that 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:23.800 switchboard connected to Erie pencil Erie, Pennsylvania'd be going the 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:27.200 wrong way Munchie in the Indiana Is it Muncie? 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:28.280 Yeah? 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:30.600 Boy, this is going terribly but I think it really 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:33.800 gets it really illustrates how cludgy the whole thing was. Uh. 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:39.760 And then it would go from Munsey slash Munchie to Garee, Indiana, Okay, 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.960 and then to I don't know, onwards and upwards until finally, 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:47.080 switchboard after switchboard after switchboard after switchboard, town to town 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.840 to town, it would finally connect all the way through 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.520 all these towns from switchboard to switchboard. You to your 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.400 friend Tacoma, who wasn't even home. 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:02.200 That you were using the Miles Davis rebreathing technique. 0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:04.520 Oh yeah, yeah. 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:06.200 You're breathing through your nose so you don't have to 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:06.760 stop talking. 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:07.840 I just didn't breathe. 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:10.960 Oh okay, that's the dizzy Gillespian message. 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:12.560 Speaking of dizzy. 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:18.280 Yes, it's amazing. I guess we'll spoil it and say 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:21.560 eventually New York was able to talk to San Francisco, 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:26.359 and in fact, I think that was well. No, the 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:28.480 first long line was between New York and Philly, and 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:32.560 eighteen eighty five, New York to San Francisco finally came around, finally, 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:37.159 I say, in nineteen fifteen, which is incredible. 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:40.480 You know, for that call, they brought Alexander Graham Bell 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:44.320 out of retirement because he'd left a super big, fat 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:48.159 rich man by this time, and had him talk to Watson. 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:50.880 Remember the first phone call. I was room to room 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:53.119 between him and Watson. He said, Watson came here, I 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:57.920 need you. And on this huge, monumental historical phone call 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:02.240 from New York to San Francisco, Belle said, Watson, come here, 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:05.000 I need you again, and Watson said, I will, but 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:07.040 it's going to take me a week to get there. 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:09.560 Watson. That's so Watson. 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:11.600 It totally is Watson. 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:16.199 Classic Watson. You know, it didn't just work with like magic. 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:18.679 You can't send something that used to going like a 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:21.680 mile or let's say one hundred miles, all of a 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:23.959 sudden sending it, you know, close to three thousand miles. 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:29.360 So they had boosters, They had loading coils, which are electromagnets, 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:33.000 that would boost the transmission. They had these vacuum tubes 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:36.119 that would regenerate a weak signal. Those were called repeaters. 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:39.320 So it needed help along the way to finally get 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.000 you know, across country. But the fact that they were 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:46.320 able to do that by nineteen fifteen is remarkable. While 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:48.199 this is happening, I mean, I think you said that 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:51.359 Bell was an old, fat, rich guy by this point. 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:57.160 That is because through even the late eighteen hundreds, Bell 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:03.119 consistently swatted away Ry with lawsuits, with shutting people down 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:05.840 with saying like, no, you know, I have a patent 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:09.040 here till eighteen ninety four, So like there are people 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:11.119 out there building in their own phones and even their 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:13.160 own switchboards, but like I'm going to go after them 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:14.520 as fast as they can build them. 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:17.400 Yeah, they had detectives that would go bust down doors 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:21.680 and confiscate bogus phones, which were phones that weren't part 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:24.760 of the Bell network, which again held the patent. Then 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:28.800 even after the patent expired, they would just sue anybody 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:32.600 and everybody. They would bribe officials to keep new phone 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:37.720 companies from being allowed to develop or found themselves. It 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:39.960 was really ruthless and one of the reasons it was 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:43.520 ruthless is because JP Morgan by this time was the 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:47.840 head of either AT and T or Bell's board of directors, 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:53.520 and Bell eventually bought AT and T and just consolidated, consolidated, consolidated. 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:57.680 They would either following JP Morgan's typical example, they would 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:00.800 either buy up the competition or crushed them out of 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:03.800 existence if the competition didn't want to sell at AT 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:07.920 and T Bell's price. So this is just how it 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:11.400 was like that. I don't remember what year the US 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:15.600 government finally stepped in and broke up Bell into smaller 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:19.080 versions of itself, but it was a It was a monopoly, 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:23.840 a government sanctioned monopoly for decades, and in some ways 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:29.240 this was good because in other cases, where like local 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:31.959 phone companies were allowed to compete, it was super cluege. 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:35.560 Sometimes you had to subscribe to two different companies to 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:37.920 be able to call two different friends depending on who 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:41.119 they were subscribed to. The rates were all over the place. 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:45.679 There was very little regulation, so having this monopoly was 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:49.560 good in some ways, but in others. Monopolies typically overall, 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:51.879 are not good for the health of an economy. 0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:56.800 Yeah, and AT and T American Telephone and Telegraph. We 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:00.840 should point out that they were approached before that and expired, 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:03.679 and the reason they were initially approached was, I mean, 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:05.080 it was part of the plan just to you know, 0:22:05.200 --> 0:22:08.600 snap up other companies, but part of it was, Hey, 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:11.320 I need AT and T to help me build these 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:14.080