HEAR, HEAR THE GANGS ALL HERE/A Tribute to the Blackberry

HEAR, HEAR THE GANGS ALL HERE/A Tribute to the Blackberry

(A New Addition is made each Monday and Thursday, Coming up on Thursday...some new ways to keep those resolutions)

Before the Blackberry, email and all the other wonderful newfangled ways we communicate these days… for centuries man communicated by sending smoke signals or yelling.

I still remember my first telephone. It consisted of two tin cans connected by a piece of string. High fidelity was not one of its outstanding qualities but a playmate and I could talk over a fairly long distance and it was intriguing. It was but a childish extension of the wondrous invention of Alexander Graham Bell. The year was 1876 and he was granted patent no. 174,465.
It was the natural outgrowth of a family that had long been involved in the transmission of coherent speech. His grandfather invented a device for overcoming stammering and his father perfected a system of visible speech for deaf mutes.

This man, born March 3, 1847 had tutored Helen Keller and worked extensively with the deaf. Now in his twenty ninth year he invented a way for the human voice to shrink the miles for vocal communication. “Mr. Watson, come here I want you,” and the words traveled no further than from one room to another. Within a year people in Boston were talking to people in New York. By the end of the 1880’s there were 47,900 telephones installed in America. These first subscribers were hardy breeds who were required to put up their own line to connect with another.

It took until 1915 for the telephone to go Intercontinental. What one inventor had described as a toy was taking over. I am old enough to remember having a party line. The coin operated telephone preceded my birth by five years, 1923. The mobile phone came into being one year later and was of great advantage to the police force. It was a distinct disadvantage to the criminal.

The first touch tone telephones were put to use in Baltimore, Maryland in 1941. The buttons were pushed by operators in a central switching office. It was too expensive for general use. By the early 1960’s low cost transistors made it possible for a private home to have this easier and faster means of dialing.

The first picture phones in 1956 were primitive at best. By the 1964 World’s Fair the picture had improved but not public acceptance. The cell phones we now take for granted actually began in 1983.

It is fascinating to follow the telephone from its humble beginnings to what we now take for granted in our twenty first century. I hate to shop but now shop with my wife by cell phone. She sees something in the grocery store and calls me to see if I am interested.

Do we talk too much while saying little? Are we better off with telephones than without? In answer to the question, consider this. Before the telephone if you wanted to go see someone you hopped on your horse and began perhaps a five or ten mile journey. If the person you were calling on had had the same idea and started in your direction by a different road the results were less than pleasing. At the end of each of your journeys you would still be the same distance apart.

With telephones, of course, we simply pick up the phone and say, “Joe/Jane, is it convenient to drop by?”

Thanks Alexander. We love you.