Letters to my digital children : the wired telephone
Hi Kabouter,
Hi Beertje,
Once upon a time, a phone wasn't used to play games, to watch YouTube and Netflix or to take and watch pictures. Once upon a time, a phone was purely meant to phone people...that means to talk to them without seeing them. You could only hear the voice of the other person. Sometimes mommy phones you like that when she's driving and then you yell to me that you can't see me. Well, telephone conversations have always been like that most of my life because old phones did not have a screen. When the phone rang you also didn't know who was on the other side, so it was always a bit of a surprise when you answered it. We still have a mostly unused phone sitting like that in a holder half hidden behind the tv in our living room, although it has a little screen showing phone numbers.
But there is more: you could not walk around with old phone as you can still do with the half hidden one behind the tv. Before that, telephones were attached with a cable to the wall and you had to have your conversation right there on that spot. So it was important to choose a good physical location for the phone device.
The location of the phone device
At grandma's house where I grew up the phone has always been in the office space downstairs unlike in most houses where the phone could be found in the living room. It's still there next grandma's computer. The advantage of the phone location there, was that conversations were never disturbed by the sounds of tv and ongoing other conversations in the house. In order to hear the phone ringing, there is a bell extension that rings loudly in the kitchen...you've been spooked by its sound once during a visit. "it's the phone", we had to explain.
So I grew up, talking to the phone always in private. That's why I still always walk away to the kitchen or hallway or bedroom when I am on the phone (or in the office, go to a private meeting room or postpone phoning someone until I'm alone in the office)....I can't have a decent conversation on the phone with other people listening along next to me. It drives me crazy and makes me feel very uneasy.
Reaching someone by phone
So you could never phone people if you were somewhere on the road and you could never answer a phone call if you weren't at home. As a result, sometimes your grandparents were very stressed when we were expecting a very important phone call and it didn't come and we had to leave somewhere. That caused a big dilemma: should we wait a bit longer at home in order to answer the expected phone call or should we leave and miss the phone call? Would the phone call still come or not? Because some people phoned on fixed days (eg aunts or ...) or a doctor would say to phone in with some test results on that evening or ... So you sat and waited for that phone call to come.
If you were on the road and needed to phone, you had to find a public phone booth that you could use if you entered some money in them. Those do not exist anymore in the streets at this moment but there used to be one in front of our house now in the little island between the traffic lights. It has been removed a couple of years before you were born, Kabouter. It wasn't used much anymore in the last years but once upon a time, there were lines of students that had to make phone calls.
People only had one phone device in the home originally. That also means that only one person could have a phone conversation in the home at the same time. The person on the phone kept the line occupied. When another person phoned us at that moment, that person would hear an occupied sound. Only since the 90ies, you could have (additional) phones that beeped if a 2nd conversation was trying to get it, giving you the opportunity to hang up the first conversation if you wanted. On our current mobile phones you can see who phones you on a 2nd line but at first just a beep was already innovative.
If you didn't put the horn correctly back on the telephone device after a phone conversation, the line would remain occupied. If you weren't making a lot of phone calls yourself, you'd only find out after a few days when other people that you met face to face would complain that it was impossible to reach you as it was ALWAYS occupied. Then you had to go and check the horn on the device and properly connect it again.
Because you could only reach someone if they were home (and not occupied in a different phone conversation), we spent a lot of time trying to reach someone by phone in the past. And then the next day at school/work/... we complained that we tried to phone all evening and did not manage to reach them. It seems a big hassle right now, but at that time we could not send a text message or e-mail either, so we actually phoned a lot more. We had to wait until we managed to phone someone or talk to them in person. By the end of each school year, I wrote down the phone numbers of my class mates homes in a little book and also the periods they'd be going on vacation (so I knew I should not try to phone them at those weeks). That helped to try to meet up in the summer period or to catch up by phone.
Because text messages didn't exist yet, neither did mobile phones , sometimes we used the phone to send a short message to someone without the need of having a conversation. Whenever we were done at the hairdresser, we "phoned" home by letting the phone ring 5 times and putting the horn back in after that. At home, my dad who knew he'd have to come and pick us up more or less at that time, knew not to answer the phone in less than 5 rings. If the phone kept ringing, it was not us and he had to pick up the phone and answer it (very shortly...because we would potentially ring right and we didn't want to have an occupied line at that moment). If the ringing stopped exactly after 5 times, he'd get in the car to come and pick us up. By not creating a conversation, we did not create any costs on the telephone bill of the hairdresser. Very effective.
Phone numbers and the phone bill
I had to write down the phone numbers of my friends because the old phones didn't have contact list as they now do. It was just a box with 10 number buttons to dial a number. So most houses had next to the phone device a phone list gadget. We also had a thick generally distributed phone book nearby where everybody's name was listed alphabetically with the phone number per city. In there you could look up the numbers of acquaintances, plumbers, doctors, .... that would not be readily listed in your own frequently used phone list. There was no internet to look them up. You found the number in the phone book or you didn't. You could also phone your friends to ask if they had the wanted number.
All phone numbers started with a regional number. The fixed phones in the houses (cfr that one hidden behind our tv) still do at this moment. But the regional number also determined whether a phone call would be more or less costly at that time. The phone bill was something that was closely monitored at our home when I grew up. If I wanted to phone a friend out of town, my father for sure would enter in to the office after 5 minutes, pointing to his watch and claiming it was a long distance call so I had to close off soon. Or I had to close off if they expected an incoming phone call.
International phone calls were even more expensive. If you didn't pay attention, the bill would rise up very quickly. So if we went on vacation, we'd line up for a public phone booth on a well agreed date with neighbours and close relatives. My mom would take her list of "to phone" people and their phone numbers and would try to reach them one by one in order to give a very quick summary that all was going well with us.
When I lived as an exchange student in Canada, we phoned 3 times during that entire year. 3 times probably 5 minutes or so: at my birthday, at Christmas and close before my return home (when my cat died). Those phone calls were mainly intended to hear each other's voice (and receiving a comment that my Dutch pronunciation had worsened during the year after not speaking Dutch out loud to anyone for almost an entire year!!) more than it was to keep one another up to date on what was going on. We wrote paper letters for that, which took 2 weeks to arrive to the other side of the world. But that's another pre-internet story.
Talking about internet: we got an internet connection after a few months (or one year?) in university after my year in Canada. It wasn't always on, but it had to connect and disconnect from the computer. That connection attempt made a very cracky loud sound. If the internet was connected, the phone line was occupied and could no longer be used. So once again, we had to agree at home when to be on the internet and when to disconnect because the phone had to be used. Just imagine we'd have to choose at home now whether we'd want to be reachable by phone or whether we'd want to watch YouTube or Netflix. Just imagine that. Lucky for you both that is no longer the case.
Hi Beertje,
Once upon a time, a phone wasn't used to play games, to watch YouTube and Netflix or to take and watch pictures. Once upon a time, a phone was purely meant to phone people...that means to talk to them without seeing them. You could only hear the voice of the other person. Sometimes mommy phones you like that when she's driving and then you yell to me that you can't see me. Well, telephone conversations have always been like that most of my life because old phones did not have a screen. When the phone rang you also didn't know who was on the other side, so it was always a bit of a surprise when you answered it. We still have a mostly unused phone sitting like that in a holder half hidden behind the tv in our living room, although it has a little screen showing phone numbers.
But there is more: you could not walk around with old phone as you can still do with the half hidden one behind the tv. Before that, telephones were attached with a cable to the wall and you had to have your conversation right there on that spot. So it was important to choose a good physical location for the phone device.
The location of the phone device
At grandma's house where I grew up the phone has always been in the office space downstairs unlike in most houses where the phone could be found in the living room. It's still there next grandma's computer. The advantage of the phone location there, was that conversations were never disturbed by the sounds of tv and ongoing other conversations in the house. In order to hear the phone ringing, there is a bell extension that rings loudly in the kitchen...you've been spooked by its sound once during a visit. "it's the phone", we had to explain.
So I grew up, talking to the phone always in private. That's why I still always walk away to the kitchen or hallway or bedroom when I am on the phone (or in the office, go to a private meeting room or postpone phoning someone until I'm alone in the office)....I can't have a decent conversation on the phone with other people listening along next to me. It drives me crazy and makes me feel very uneasy.
Reaching someone by phone
So you could never phone people if you were somewhere on the road and you could never answer a phone call if you weren't at home. As a result, sometimes your grandparents were very stressed when we were expecting a very important phone call and it didn't come and we had to leave somewhere. That caused a big dilemma: should we wait a bit longer at home in order to answer the expected phone call or should we leave and miss the phone call? Would the phone call still come or not? Because some people phoned on fixed days (eg aunts or ...) or a doctor would say to phone in with some test results on that evening or ... So you sat and waited for that phone call to come.
If you were on the road and needed to phone, you had to find a public phone booth that you could use if you entered some money in them. Those do not exist anymore in the streets at this moment but there used to be one in front of our house now in the little island between the traffic lights. It has been removed a couple of years before you were born, Kabouter. It wasn't used much anymore in the last years but once upon a time, there were lines of students that had to make phone calls.
People only had one phone device in the home originally. That also means that only one person could have a phone conversation in the home at the same time. The person on the phone kept the line occupied. When another person phoned us at that moment, that person would hear an occupied sound. Only since the 90ies, you could have (additional) phones that beeped if a 2nd conversation was trying to get it, giving you the opportunity to hang up the first conversation if you wanted. On our current mobile phones you can see who phones you on a 2nd line but at first just a beep was already innovative.
If you didn't put the horn correctly back on the telephone device after a phone conversation, the line would remain occupied. If you weren't making a lot of phone calls yourself, you'd only find out after a few days when other people that you met face to face would complain that it was impossible to reach you as it was ALWAYS occupied. Then you had to go and check the horn on the device and properly connect it again.
Because you could only reach someone if they were home (and not occupied in a different phone conversation), we spent a lot of time trying to reach someone by phone in the past. And then the next day at school/work/... we complained that we tried to phone all evening and did not manage to reach them. It seems a big hassle right now, but at that time we could not send a text message or e-mail either, so we actually phoned a lot more. We had to wait until we managed to phone someone or talk to them in person. By the end of each school year, I wrote down the phone numbers of my class mates homes in a little book and also the periods they'd be going on vacation (so I knew I should not try to phone them at those weeks). That helped to try to meet up in the summer period or to catch up by phone.
Because text messages didn't exist yet, neither did mobile phones , sometimes we used the phone to send a short message to someone without the need of having a conversation. Whenever we were done at the hairdresser, we "phoned" home by letting the phone ring 5 times and putting the horn back in after that. At home, my dad who knew he'd have to come and pick us up more or less at that time, knew not to answer the phone in less than 5 rings. If the phone kept ringing, it was not us and he had to pick up the phone and answer it (very shortly...because we would potentially ring right and we didn't want to have an occupied line at that moment). If the ringing stopped exactly after 5 times, he'd get in the car to come and pick us up. By not creating a conversation, we did not create any costs on the telephone bill of the hairdresser. Very effective.
Phone numbers and the phone bill
I had to write down the phone numbers of my friends because the old phones didn't have contact list as they now do. It was just a box with 10 number buttons to dial a number. So most houses had next to the phone device a phone list gadget. We also had a thick generally distributed phone book nearby where everybody's name was listed alphabetically with the phone number per city. In there you could look up the numbers of acquaintances, plumbers, doctors, .... that would not be readily listed in your own frequently used phone list. There was no internet to look them up. You found the number in the phone book or you didn't. You could also phone your friends to ask if they had the wanted number.
All phone numbers started with a regional number. The fixed phones in the houses (cfr that one hidden behind our tv) still do at this moment. But the regional number also determined whether a phone call would be more or less costly at that time. The phone bill was something that was closely monitored at our home when I grew up. If I wanted to phone a friend out of town, my father for sure would enter in to the office after 5 minutes, pointing to his watch and claiming it was a long distance call so I had to close off soon. Or I had to close off if they expected an incoming phone call.
International phone calls were even more expensive. If you didn't pay attention, the bill would rise up very quickly. So if we went on vacation, we'd line up for a public phone booth on a well agreed date with neighbours and close relatives. My mom would take her list of "to phone" people and their phone numbers and would try to reach them one by one in order to give a very quick summary that all was going well with us.
When I lived as an exchange student in Canada, we phoned 3 times during that entire year. 3 times probably 5 minutes or so: at my birthday, at Christmas and close before my return home (when my cat died). Those phone calls were mainly intended to hear each other's voice (and receiving a comment that my Dutch pronunciation had worsened during the year after not speaking Dutch out loud to anyone for almost an entire year!!) more than it was to keep one another up to date on what was going on. We wrote paper letters for that, which took 2 weeks to arrive to the other side of the world. But that's another pre-internet story.
Talking about internet: we got an internet connection after a few months (or one year?) in university after my year in Canada. It wasn't always on, but it had to connect and disconnect from the computer. That connection attempt made a very cracky loud sound. If the internet was connected, the phone line was occupied and could no longer be used. So once again, we had to agree at home when to be on the internet and when to disconnect because the phone had to be used. Just imagine we'd have to choose at home now whether we'd want to be reachable by phone or whether we'd want to watch YouTube or Netflix. Just imagine that. Lucky for you both that is no longer the case.
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