Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

Person to Person by Peter Young, Granta, pp 296, £19.95

One of the wonders of the modern world is surely that anyone with access
to a telephone can make a call to 700 million other phones round the globe.
Peter Young’s exhaustively researched and most readable social history of
the telephone’s development is aptly titled.

Although others had voiced the idea earlier – notably Philip Reis in
Germany – the story of the telephone effectively began in 1876, the year
that Alexander Graham Bell invented what was then called ‘the electric speaking
telephone’. The first, now legendary, words spoken via this medium were
‘Mr Watson, come here, I want you,’ as Bell summoned his assistant from
a distant room.

Person to Person takes us from these early days up to the present, when
telephony is accepted as a necessity for social and business life. While
advances in techniques and their impact are fully covered, Young’s is not
a technical story. Instead, it is an always absorbing, sometimes surprising
and frequently hilarious account of society’s reaction to, and utilisation
of, the device over more than a century of development. The author’s thorough
treatment of his subject provides illuminating comment on the changes in
social attitudes over the years. comment on the changes in social attitudes
over the years.

It was a sluggish beginning. When Bell’s financial backer offered all
rights in the invention to Western Union in 1877, their president turned
it down, asking ‘What use could this company make of an electrical toy?’
The Bell Telephone company was formed later that year and opened the first
public exchange in Britain in 1879. Usage grew rapidly in the US after the
slow start and Western Union mourned its decision.

Britain’s lethargic General Post Office did not rush into things. Of
course, it had an incredibly efficient postal service but it was burdened
by losses in the telegraph service which it had taken over in 1870. This
did not stop private telephone companies starting up, and competition became
fierce. The private firms were eventually nationalised – with the exception
of the municipal service in Hull which is still going – and the GPO took
over from 1912. The first automatic exchange in Britain opened in Epsom,
Surrey, in the same year but the country lagged behind Germany, Scandinavia
and the Antipodes, as well as the US.

Opportunists quickly realised the possibilities of the phone for entertainment.
Theatre plays, operas and even church services were relayed to subscribers.
A service of this type in Budapest had 6000 subscribers by the turn of the
century, and the similar UK Electrophone service lasted until 1938, although
no new installations were made after 1926.

Betting over the phone became legal in 1894 and passing on racing results
became an unofficial part of the help that British operators were expected
to provide. An early – if not the first – call-girl service was established
in Melbourne in 1891 when the city’s leading brothels joined the network.
A gloomier use was envisaged by a rich farmer in Louisiana, who in 1908
had a telephone installed in her tomb-to-be connected with a cemetery keeper
in case she woke up after burial.

Not surprisingly, professional and business subscribers predominated
in the early years. I was surprised to discover that this trend persisted
– in Britain at least – until 1940. Nowadays nearly three-quarters of the
telephones are in people’s homes. No doubt the cost deterred people. Others
may have been frightened by the alarms surrounding the new technology, such
as the risk of catching diseases from a phone’s mouthpiece (remember the
Phonotas girls?), invasion of privacy and the possibility of electric shock.
Some fears persist: we are told that in 1976 the German magazine Quick claimed
that bone and kidney inflammation could be transmitted by a phone’s mouthpiece.

That not much is new under the sun is shown by the report of 1882 in
London that a suburban resident ‘has had his letters read to him from his
office, dictated his replies to a shorthand writer at the City, communicated
with his broker, solicitor or banker, and all without leaving his bedroom’.
The first telecommuter?

My only criticism of this easy read is that the anecdotal style sometimes
messes up the chronology. On the other hand, this is the property that makes
Young’s book just as suitable for dipping into as for reading from cover
to cover. I recommend it, however you plan to read it.

Peter Wymer is a freelance writer.