on Telephones

Yesterday I found myself wondering in bemusement about the development of the telephone. One of the simplest devices, present in nearly every household and let's face it, we take it for granted. It's so simple nowadays to just give BT a call and ask them to connect you, which they do in less time than it takes for anyone to spell antidisestablishmentarianism.

The telephone had long been invented when I was little, we had one at home, and it was no big deal really just to pick up the handset (according to Wikipedia (?)) and dial the number for a relative or friend who lived on the other side of the country, or the world for that matter.

Speaking of dialling... The only reason why we call it dialling today is because old phones like the one above. Before those came along you had to phone the operator and ask them to "connect" you. I wonder therefore what we'd call it today had the dial not been invented?! What if mankind (or telephonekind for that matter) had gone straight to buttons?

I remember back when I was a kid we had a phone similar to the above, which was possibly white, but I can't be sure. And I remember it being a huge event in our family when we got one of them combined Radio/Tape-recorder/Telephone jobies. It wasn't so much the fact that these three devices were combined but the thing had a green button with which you could put the the whole conversation on loudspeak via the radio speakers and the built in microphone meant that you could put the handset down. I remember pleading with my mum to use this Telephone for certain calls rather then the other! Ah... those were the days...
Then mobile phones came along and for quite a while I refused to get one. I was convinced, and I still am to a certain extent now, that unless you could also brush your teeth and so on with it, it was an unnecessary evil. And why would I want to phone people when I'm away from home? Only being able to phone from home simply meant that life had to be organised. With a mobile phone you don't have to organise anymore, which is also why those miserable subjects who don't manage to switch their phones off before lecture get phonecalls during lecture when person B on the other end should damn well know that person A has got lectures! I'm so turing into a grumpy old man.
But, in the end, I got myslef one of them mobile things, and it didn't last long. They're just not sturdy enough. I think they should hold out more. I think it's wrong to replace a phone after half a year just because it's not brand new anymore. It's not reasonable and it's not economic cause you're spending money on not only something you don't really need but also something that didn't need replacing EVER twenty years ago. Yes I know, grumpy old sod.
Phone booths have started dissappearing with the invention of the mobile phone. At least in Switzerland they were very quick to take them out of service for not making the telecompany enough money, I'm surprised how many phone booths in Britain seem to be surviving.
Of course now technology has moved on again with the availability of the internet. In twenty yeas time people will probably laugh at the download speeds that we used to have to put up with and still do. From the broad availability of this interconnecting network tool it's only a small step to establishing live phone-like connections over the internet. Since I'm away from home here in Britain and my parents we originally used to phone and when I finally got an internet connection we started using Skype. Why pay for something that you can have for free?! Lately I have taken this development one step further; phoning from computer to landline, or mobile for that matter. And I'm still amazed by this possibility. Having grown up with all this technology (we must have got our first computer in the late 80s) it still hasn't lost its wonder.

funny that...