The Story of the Telephone

2 — Communication - The Telephone —From LEnnox 6-6111 to the Touch Keypad

EXPLORING THE DIGITAL WORLD -----

This series of illustrated lectures was developed for the information of the Senior residents of the New Horizon Tower at Bloor and Dufferin St. in Toronto, Canada.

Bill Coffman

"Spitfire Studio"

My Partner in this Project, Patrizia, Palombo, has assembled the Power Point presentation of illustrations that she has harvested, — almost entirely from Internet sources. Patrizia is completing her courses with Guelph University at Humber College, in Family, Community, and Social Services.

And I also wanted to note that most of the Historical information, and the definitions that I use, have also been taken from Internet sources and edited for this presentation.

As well, before we get to the topic of telephones, I want to thank Cassie and Lindsay for their encouragement and help with this project, and Anne McDonagh and Ada Garrison, for additional encouragement, and for help with my presentation.

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I also want to thank a major contributor to this session about the Telephone, Stanley Svihla, who worked next door in the old Bell Building, the Lennox Exchange. And Ted Graham, who supplied the photos of some of the devices from his Brother's collection of old Bell telephones.

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Finally, I want to dedicate this presentation to the memory of my Old Friend and Buddy, Andy Irving, who died in Aurora last February. Andy was an aviation enthusiast, who also worked for Mother Bell, installing switchboards and climbing poles. Andy told many stories about the life of a Bell Canada lineman and Foreman, especially about his adventures installing the telephone systems in Saudi Arabia and in Trinidad. We had some great times.

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It is difficult to explain to our Grandchildren and those of their generation, that there was a time when conversations between individuals required personal contact, or at least a proximity somewhere between a face-to-face meeting and shouting distance.

It was possible to initiate correspondence, hand written letters that were couriered or posted, but to talk to someone, you both actually had to be there.

I have personally seen the modern corollary of this at a family gathering, when two young ladies sat on opposite sides of the room with their Smartphone Devices, and exchanged Text messages. I looked at their screens to confirm that this was what they were doing..

In the years before the invention of the telephone and long before the Smartphone, Sailors and the military had developed signal systems with flags, and many civilizations had elaborate communication with smoke signals, but these systems required line-of-sight visibility, and a clear day.

(Can you imagine a smoke signal with the message —“I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”)

It helps explain why community events, coffee houses, bars, and Church services were so important.

People met and talked to each other.

Then in the 1870s an event here in Ontario, Canada changed everything.

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In July 1874 Alexander Graham Bell conceived the theoretical concept for the telephone while vacationing at his parents' farm near Brantford, Canada.

On 10 March 1876 Bell first successfully transmitted speech, saying "Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!"

And on the 10th of August 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the world's first long-distance telephone call, over a distance of about 6 miles, between Brantford and Paris Ontario, Canada 

It was only about 60 years later that I remember the telephone in our home on Number 8 Highway between Beamsville and Vineland in the Niagara fruit belt. We were privileged to have a two party line, shared with our neighbours down the Highway. Our phone number was 623 Ring 1-1, one long and one short ring, repeated as necessary.

To call our Aunts in Vineland, you pressed a little button on the left side of the device and turned the crank briskly. Then you took the receiver off of the hook and waited for Elva or Nellie in the Vineland Telephone Exchange to pick up the call. “Number Please”. “148-W please” was the appropriate reply in this case, (although there was some debate about whether being polite might be misunderstood .)

 “One moment, please” was the expected reply as Elva —or Nellie connected our line to the 148-W line with one of her flexible cables with the brass telephone “jack” fitting on one end. You could hear the phone ring at the other end until one of the Aunts picked it up and the conversation started.

The telephone ‘operators’ at the local exchanges in the country were extremely helpful with local news "she must be home because she was just talking to ...." "The fire is not in Town, it's in the country at .....'s farm!" And other bits of newsy information.

The system was powered by the two large N°. 6 low voltage dry cell batteries that were in each phone box, and which were replaced by the Telephone service man on a regular basis.. These were valuable items for us boys, that usually had enough of a charge remaining to operate many electric devices. On the larger party lines, quite often the sound deteriorated as other parties joined the conversation or just listened in on their neighbours and the dry cells were unable to compensate for the overloaded circuits..

Long distance calls — to St Catharines or Toronto were a more complicated thing as the calls were directed manually through a number of exchanges. I recall that during “The War” calls to Uncle John in London, England, had to be booked well in advance with several posted letters back and forth to ensure that everyone was in place for the expensive ’Overseas Call’.

Dial Telephones and Automatic exchanges came into existence in the 1920s. 

They eliminated the need for human switchboard operators to complete the connections required for a telephone call.

The telephone caller turned a dial with a finger starting each turn with the letter or number of the numbered address that they were calling according to the sequence of numbers and letters marked on the dial.

This action sent electronic ‘pulses’ to the automatic switching system which made the connection to the telephone address that was being dialled.

 Initially, long distance calls required an operator (0) to make the connections, but with changes in the numeric address system, the caller could dial directly to almost anywhere in the world that had a similar switching system. Underseas cables carried the wires between continents.

Stan Svihla, who worked for “Mother Bell” in those years comments that “The "Girls" that manned the long distance switchboards had that uncanny ability to recognize one another on the whole North American Continent ! The top of that hierarchy was dominated by those operators that worked ( I should say "manned “) the long distance "boards" because they were paid the highest wages among the women. All operators got higher wages sooner than the men.” When Stan was still at Bell that was just about to change drastically and very quickly.

Automation replaced human operators with electromechanical systems and telephones were equipped with a dial by which a caller transmitted the required telephone number to the automatic switching system.

An automatic telephone exchange senses that the user has removed the handset from the switchhook or cradle. The exchange sends a dial-tone to indicate to the user that the exchange is ready to receive dialled numbers. “Dial pulsing” is the method used by telephones that have rotary dials. In this method, the dial is turned until it stops, after which it is released and allowed to return to its resting position.

 As the dial is returning to its resting position, the telephone alternately breaks and restores the current between the telephone and the exchange. The exchange device counts the number of times that current flow is interrupted, which indicates the number that had been dialled. The pulses generated by the telephone are processed and a connection is established to the destination telephone within the same exchange or to another distant exchange.

The exchange maintains the connection until one of the parties hangs up. Additional features, such as billing equipment, may also be incorporated into the exchange.

The Bell System dial service implemented a feature called automatic number identification (ANI) which facilitated services like automated billing, toll-free long distance numbers, and 9-1-1 service 

Before ANI, long distance calls were placed through an operator who asked the calling party's number and recorded it on a paper toll ticket.

Early exchanges were electromechanical systems using motors, shaft drives, rotating switches and relays.

The BELL Building on Dufferin street, just north of the Tower, was just such a system. The building was designed and constructed in 1956, with extra strength to hold the weight of the wires and switches of the exchange.

Stan says that the Central Office on Dufferin at Bloor was known as the Lennox which housed just one of the exchanges that it handled

Stan's wife worked at the Walnut Exchange that was on Asquith Ave. near Yonge and Bloor . That gave them a little perk as employees were only charged $2.00 a year for the telephone. 

Stan worked  in the Central office on either of the two floors that carried the thousands of thin copper wires protected by a plastic coating that ran between cable numbered boards across the room on a heavy table to another series of cable number boards in any direction on this table. The pile of wires running any which way could be as thick as two feet in some areas.

Some wires near the bottom of the pile that were there from day one, had old cloth insulation. They joked that Alexander Graham Bell put them there ! The other floors had the multitude of rotary switches that moved vertically then horizontally seeking the numbers dialled with thousands of these clicking and counting the moves and at the same time registering  the calls. Bells would ring when a relay jammed so it could be a noisy place.

Stan, had the opportunity one evening to be shown a small switch board measuring about the size of a small bar refrigerator that was solidly packed with small micro switches that operated silently. The Bell Laboratories in New Jersey were using their development of transistors to introduce them into the digital telephone system. The Bell technician predicted that within a few decades each client would be able to call any place directly from his home phone .

When digital systems made the switching system obsolete, Bell cleared out all of the equipment from the Dufferin St. exchange, and proposed to sell the building.  There had been a lot of copper wire in there on two floors especially where telephone numbers were paired up and connected to cable numbers, With all that equipment in there the whole structure was overbuilt. According to some reports, the strength of the construction made demolition too expensive for potential condo builders, so the building is being converted into a training school for Bell technicians…. 

The old telephone exchanges and their related telephone numbers were identified with names that derived from the letters and numbers (Alpha-numeric) on the telephone dials. The Dufferin exchange next door became the LEnnox exchange in 1956, that incorporated the earlier MElrose, LAkeside, KEnwood, OLiver, and LLoydbrook exchanges that had been established in the ’20s and ’30s. Originally these had been two letters and four digit numbers, but in 1951, the increase in population forced the addition of another digit to the first two letters.

In 1966 everything changed and the old exchange names were ’numerated’ and LEnnox 1 became 53-1 and the Area Codes were added.

The telephone number for the New Horizons Tower, and likely your home phone (Land Line) are “536” numbers. You can amuse your friends and confuse your kids by announcing that the Tower is now 416-LEnnox 6-6111, and that your home number has been changed accordingly. Properly ‘dialled’ the call will undoubtedly be connected.

A private telephone exchange for corporate or business use, connected to the telephone network, is often referred to as a private branch exchange (PBX). A PBX is installed in business facilities, with large office spaces to serve the local private telephone system and any private leased line circuits. Smaller installations might deploy a PBX in the office of a receptionist. The PBX was operated much like the old manual exchanges.

n the 1960s the telephone companies (Bell System in the US and Bell Canada) hired Industrial Designers to develop new concepts for the Telephone that would create more sales. The integrated handset was one of the early outcomes with the microphone and speaker ergonomically located at the ends of a comfortable hand grip.

New configurations were conceived to hold these new components.

The Princess telephone was introduced by the Bell System in 1959. It was a compact telephone designed for convenient use in the bedroom, and contained a light-up dial for use as a night-light. 

The Princess was initially designed by the famed industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, having designed previous Western Electric models with the Bell Labs engineers. Contemporary advertising demonstrates that this telephone was marketed to women, hence its feminine model name. The model was available in a broad range of colours, including pink, red, yellow, moss green, black, white, beige, ivory, light blue, turquoise, and grey.

The telephone was produced at Western Electric in Indianapolis, and by Northern Telecom in Canada. The Princess required an external electric transformer to power the lighted dial which was mounted in the centre on the base of the telephone. The Princess underwent several changes in its production run:
Due to its removal from production, and its attractive design, the Princess has become a collectible phone. Princess telephones in pink, turquoise, and black are among the rarest colours of the phones and most valuable.

Push-button touch-tone telephones began to enter service in the 1970s Touch-tone dialling quickly replaced the older and slower pulse dial system and by the1980s and 90s the majority of customers owned touch-tone phones in their homes. 

Ergonomic research had resulted in the design of the Touch-Tone keypad that arranged the push-buttons into 12 positions in a 3 column by 4 row rectangular array, and placed the 1, 2, and 3 keys in the top row for most accurate dialling. The remaining digits occupied the lower rows in sequence from left to right, however, placing the 0 into the centre of the fourth row, while omitting the lower left, and lower right positions. These two positions were later assigned to the asterisk and pound key when the keypad was expanded for twelve buttons in 1969.This push-button layout is still used today for all Cell phones and ’Smart’ phones.

The touch-tone system uses audible sounds or tones for each of the digits zero through nine plus the two keys labeled with an asterisk or star (*) and the pound, number, or hash sign (#) to represent the 11th and 12th signals. These signals can be used for various additional services and customer-controlled calling features such as banking.

The international standard for telephone signalling used dual-tone multi frequency (DTMF) signalling for the new system.This standard assigns specific sound frequencies to each column and each row of push-buttons in the keypad. When a key is pressed it generates a combination signal of the two frequencies from the selected row and column, a dual-tone signal, which is transmitted over the phone line to the telephone exchange. 

In the exchange, this was translated to mechanical switches in old systems and digital switching in computer operated systems. The digital computer switching systems reduced the mechanical size of the exchanges and eventually led to the elimination of the central exchange buildings.

While this new technology was not immediately available on all switching systems, the new exchange receivers and switches were still compatible with rotary dialling. A converter was required to adapted touch-tone to any existing mechanical exchange that still used 1970s equipment, but its speed was limited to the slower pulse of rotary dialling rates.

The circuits of subscribers wanting to get the advantages of the touch-tone features often had to be moved from older exchanges that supported only pulse dialling, to an electronic or digital switching system. This required the assignment of a new telephone number, which was billed at a higher monthly rate.

Telephone companies continued to levy surcharges for touch-tone service long after any technical justification existed.

Fibre-Optics

In the1970s, fibre-optics revolutionized the telecommunications industry and have played a major role in the advent of the Digital Age. Because of its advantage over electrical systems, optical fibres have largely replaced copper wire communications in communication networks in the developed world. 

An optical fibre is a flexible, transparent fibre made by drawing glass to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair Optical fibres  permit transmission of digital data streams over longer distances and at higher data rates than wire cables. 

The transmitters in optical fibre links are generally LEDs, light emitting diodes. Infrared light, rather than visible light is used, because optical fibres transmit infrared wavelengths with less change. 

In 1971, Bell Labs invented a computerized switching system for telephone traffic. Digital technology has also been used in other stages along the way.

In the 1980s, cordless telephones or portable telephones replaces the handset cord with a radio link. The handset communicates with a base station connected to a fixed telephone line. The range is limited, usually to the same building or some short distance from the base station. The base station attaches to the telephone network the same way a corded telephone does.

Unlike a corded telephone, a cordless telephone needs to be plugged in to the electricity circuit to power the base station. The cordless handset is powered by a rechargeable battery, which is charged when the handset is stored in its cradle.

Similar to that on early Cell Phones, a small screen on the handset shows the number being dialled and incoming numbers and names. These devices usually hold a digitized personal phone book and can record numbers dialled into the system and record names and numbers from messages received. The Messages waiting will also be shown if this feature is subscribed to.

A mobile phone is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area. With early mobile phones, the radio frequency link established a connection to  a mobile phone operator to provide access to the public telephone network.

Most modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network, and therefore mobile telephones are often also called cellular telephones or cell phones. In addition to operating as telephones, todays mobile phones support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messaging services, email, internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared and Bluetooth), business applications, gaming, and digital photography. Mobile phones which offer these and more general computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones. We will talk about Mobile Phones and Cell Phones and Smartphones as a separate subject.