 This is the SF Productions podcast network And I'm Mark you can check out our audio podcast how I got my wife to read comics on iTunes or in our website SFpodcastnetwork.com Some of you might be watching this episode from your smartphone or a tablet Which would be considered witchcraft when the telephone was first invented in the 19th century Although there's quite a debate about this Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell Patented the telephone in 1876 barely beating out Elijah Gray Bell quickly introduced the concept at the US Centennial Exposition that year The exhibit was only a success due to a fluke Dom Pedro II Emperor of Brazil had met Bell previously while visiting deaf schools Bell's wife was deaf and the Emperor's enthusiasm over the telephone more about seeing Bell that anything got a lot of press The Bell telephone company quickly owned a worldwide monopoly the international arm was spun off into a separate company International telephone and telegraph based originally in Cuba Bell bought out their main equipment supplier Western Electric And after some re-organization became American telephone and telegraph AT&T in 1899 that was previously a division called AT&T long lines responsible for stringing telephone lines across The country between 1899 and in 1982 AT&T was responsible for almost all phone service in the US a Monopoly tacitly a cade by the government via a 1913 agreement and during this period AT&T was variously involved in radio They acquired ownership of the first vacuum tubes and also sparred with RCAN patents an agreement on transmission lines Allowed the creation of the first radio network NBC In terms of electronics their Bell labs division had a hand-in or created the transistor Radio astronomy and the Unix operating system like all empires AT&T's monopoly started to crumble over time in 1956 third-party devices were allowed to be connected to leased phones via a supreme court decision until this point Virtually all phone equipment was leased via Western Electric and AT&T. It was just part of your bill in 1968 third-party equipment could be connected directly to the AT&T network allowing answering machines and later computer modems to blossom From 1974 to 82 the US government fought a long legal battle to formally break up AT&T They finally agreed as long as they could get into the new lucrative computer business, which didn't end up actually painting out Seven baby Bell companies were created from AT&T's phone system Ameritech in the Midwest Verizon on the East Coast Bell South 9x which covered New England and New York Pacific Telesis which handled California and Nevada Southwest Bell and US West which handled Middle America and the North Pacific Along with Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England telephone, which stayed kind of on their own All of them have changed names MERS or been bought out throughout the years Southwestern Bell was renamed SBC who bought out three other baby bells and then the AT&T Mothership to become the AT&T we know today. Yes. So Mark, let's talk about phones from the consumer side and what you remember Well, I remember having two phones in the house a standard Western Electric of course because you had no choice Green desktop phone in the basement and a wall-mounted yellow phone in the kitchen with a long cord There was always a maintenance process post-call because you had to detangle that spiral cord every time Yeah, we had that long cord to in fact my dad still does he hasn't hooked up to a different phone that he bought He hasn't gone cordless in the kitchen yet and in our house that phone cord was long enough that we could take the handset and stretch the cord into like a closet or the little bathroom The phones were heavy. They were built like tanks and lasted forever The wall phone was hardwired in of course and the desktop phone had a four-prong plug They could be moved to different outlets in the house now since there was only one line You had to make sure no one else was using the other phone or plan to do so Yeah, you think that's bad my grandmother well at least well into the 1980s still had a party line She had one of those old Bakelite dial phones and you know, she would know to answer it if it rang in her pattern Long-distance calls were mostly verboten and they caused a fortune kids today are lucky They have the news to keep in touch with friends who move, you know When we were young and you know a friend moved away, we could write them letters But that's it because long distance meant money out of our parents pockets We finally got the little snap-in jacks You see today right around the time that cheap phones came on the market to buy which my dad did a lot When I first got into computers and online services like compu serve You had to announce to the house that you were going to go online as anyone picking up another extension Could kill the call. We didn't have that problem for long since my dad was the one online He was online with the source early very very early in In the online era, so we very quickly got a second phone line Exclusively for the computer and dad Because with 14 age girls in the house dad wouldn't have gotten much phone time free We did often hear the screech of the modem before At one point AT&T decided to get into the new game of actually selling telephones Enter the AT&T phone stores that would appear in malls There are a lot of goofy designs as AT&T tried to compete with all the third-party handsets This was much later than the AT&T stores, but do you remember the enterprise phone? I wanted a work promotion. It's still around here. I think I can see it over there. Yeah In college, I didn't have my own phone in my dorm room because nobody did back then So we had to use a pay phone at the end of the hall now We had a whole procedure for this I'd call my parents give a fake name and ask for a collect call This is where the other end pays for the call and then the operator would say will you accept a collect call from Herbert? Yeah, they would refuse the call But they would then know I was available for a call and they would call me back With the cost of long distance on a pay phone. I didn't feel too bad about it Now we did have a phone in our dorm room I think for my last two years of college and and we paid for the long distance on that We got a bill every month at one point. I had a friend who would sneak in and use our phone So she wouldn't have to pay once we caught her That stopped pretty quickly You know and you think about it now you can call anyone Anywhere anytime for virtually nothing from from your your cell phone But nobody calls anymore everyone just texts or text or tweets or social network. Yeah, whatever It's just so different from when we were absolutely So well, you're checking out your social network feeds You can check out our audio podcast how I got my wife treat comics on iTunes or on our website SF podcast network.com From the pop culture bunker. I'm Indy and I'm mark. Thanks for watching That's for me