Intro

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome To Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the universe.
This is episode 214. All the bells and whistles Hi, I’m Jake.
This week I’ll be talking about a Boston inventor and entrepreneur who created the first commercially viable telephone network.
Not Alexander Graham Bell, who’s credited with inventing the telephone but Edwin Thomas Holmes.
Starting in the 1850s, his father, Edwin Holmes, created the first burglar alarm company here in Boston.
Then Edwin Thomas Holmes adapted the alarm company’s network of telegraph wires in the 1870s to work with the telephone switchboard he invented Working with Alexander Graham Bell.
The Homes has turned his invention into a business and helped him build the Bell telephone company.

[0:57] But before we talk about the birth of Bell, I want to thank our latest Patreon sponsors Ryan P. And Eric C as well as Scott K, who made a generous one time contribution on PayPal.
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[2:06] Now it’s time for this week’s main topic. These days. We all live our lives on our smartphones.

All The Bells And Whistles

[2:13] You’re probably listening to my voice on your smartphone right now.
The modern smartphones so remarkable that it’s easy to forget how important, complex and advanced the landline phone network seemed just a few decades ago, even though it was really based on 19th century technology.
The telephone is so old that when the businessman who turned it into a successful product got his start in electrical work, he had to make his own insulated wire while working for his father, also an inventor and entrepreneur.
He would sit out in the backyard with the huge schools of copper wire his father would buy, and he later wrote,
on a cone shaped wheel, he would put a coil of braided wire, and running it through green paint would carry it onto a drying wheel, from which, two days later it was again re wound into coils convenient for his men to carry.
That’s right. Greenhouse paint was the first electrical insulation, which sounds totally safe.

[3:13] His account continues. While a boy, I spent many hours of my time when free from school, painting wire in the backyard, when I would infinitely if preferred to have been playing marbles in the street with the rest of my boy companions.
I think this improvised shop of my father’s congest Lee claimed to have been the first insulated wire factory.

[3:33] We continued to paint this cotton covered wire ourselves until about the year 18 70 when Eugene Phillips of Providence began in a very crude way, making insulated wire for electrical purposes.
However, the story of the telephone network doesn’t begin with the backyard wire factory that closed in 18 70.
It begins a few years earlier in 18 52 when a Somerville minister filed an application for US patent number 9802,
to all whom it may concern be, it known that I Augustus, our pope of Somerville and the county of Middlesex and State of Massachusetts,
have invented a new and useful or improved magnetic alarm to be applied to either a door or a window or both of a dwelling house or other building,
for the purpose of giving an alarm in case of burglary, IHS or other attempts to enter the same through said door window by opening said door window.
When the door was open to the window raised, it released a spring switch, which Pope called a key and completed a circuit.
And at the other end of the circuit was a bell. As described in Pope’s patent application, the operation of the apparatus is as follows.

[4:46] While the door is closed, the window sash down the magnetic circuit is broken because this spring of the key is thrown out of connection with the upper wire of the door window frame.
But as soon as the door is opened, the window sash moved so as to allow the spring of the key to come into contact with the upper wire or the metallic plate at the lower end.
There of the circuit will be closed, the current of electricity being made to flow through the circuit breaker and around the magnet.
As soon as this takes place, the magnet becomes charged and draws the armature toward it and thereby throws the hammer of the bell against the bell.
During the movement of the armature toward the magnet, it throws or moves the circuit breaker out of connection or contact with the wire, whereby the circuit will be again broken.
So is that de magnetize the magnet and allow the armature to fall back until the circuit breaker again comes in contact with the wire and thereby closes the electric circuit and produces another blow of the hammer on the bell.
Thus, a constant succession of blows of the hammer on the bell will be produced.
It may sound complicated, but you’ve seen and probably heard bells like this 1000 times.
Every time you’re walking down the hallway in an older building and you see an alarm bell melted high on the wall with a round bell and clapper next to it in a box below it, you’re looking at Pope’s alarm bell.
Many older buildings used them in fire alarms, and some of us went to high schools. Were a bell like that would announced that it was time to change classes.

[6:14] A few months after his 30th birthday, Harvard divinity alumnus Reverend Augustus Russell Pope resigned from his church in Kingston, and a few months later he moved to Somerville with his wife, Lucy, and their two daughters and two sons.
He had accepted an offer to take over as the pastor of Somerville’s Unitarian Church, where he started in November 18 49.
As a profile said here, he continued to labor with great acceptance to the people of his charge until his death, with the exception of a few months, about two years since during which period, he acted a state agent and lecturer for the Massachusetts Board of Education.

[6:51] Unfortunately, that death would come early at age 39 in 18 58.
In the meantime, practically any moment that wasn’t taken up by his pastoral duties was devoted to education.
The same profile continues. He delivered many lectures before conventions of teachers for the Board of Education and which he displayed much ingenuity.
One, particularly on telegraphs, was highly commended.
He edited or prepared the first educational yearbook and wrote many articles for the Massachusetts teacher.
It’s hard to understand how a Unitarian minister would have gotten started with the sort of electrical experiments that led him to create the first burglar alarm.
But it’s entirely possible that he was building on the existing fire alarm telegraph in 1992 Thesis on the Homes Burglar Alarm Karen Donnelly wrote.
Although it is unlikely that Popes exact catalysts will ever be known, it’s difficult to imagine that he developed his system in total isolation.
Somerville was located just two miles from Boston, which at the time was the major American Center for Telegraphic Manufacturing.
Also as the nation’s premiere scientific center, Boston lead in making all manner of scientific apparatus and had plenty of skilled artisans, inventors, electrician’s machinists, engineers, the technological elite of the nation and residents.

[8:15] One of those technological elite was William Francis Channing, son of William Ellery Channing, the head of the Unitarian church.
William Francis had disappointed his father by being more interested in gadgets and technology than ideas and theology.
As telegraph technology improved, he became convinced that,
by a very simple application of the electromagnetic telegraph, the delays firefighters faced in identifying and locating fires may be avoided by the means of giving immediate and precise information throughout the city on any alarm.

[8:49] In 18 51. He presented his idea to the city government has described by Stephanie Sorrow in her book Boston on Fire.
His plan called for a Siris of district’s, each with a distinct number and a system of double wires linking signal stations to a central office.
People would report fires by cranking a handle in the signal box.
A notched code wheel would break her complete in electrical circuit, indicating its location by a series of dots and dashes.
After verifying the box number, the central office would send out a telegraph signal.
They would trigger the fire bells, which would chime the number of the district, followed by the number of the box.
The city accepted his proposal and installed a system of fire alarms based on Channing’s design.
This system remains in place today, and if you examine an older fire alarm box in Boston, you’ll see the words Fire alarm telegraph station with a number.
In fact, when a fire broke out in the North End during a nationwide 911 outage in December 2018, a fast thinking resident pulled the alarm at box number 12 12.
The Boston Fire Department tweeted Fortunately, our firebox system has been operational since 18 52. No injuries.

[10:08] Writing for Universal Hub, Adam Gavin pointed out a historical connection.
That location was the site of the first ever fire alarm, signaled by a street box for a fire around 8 25 PM on April 29th, 18 52 just one day after Boston turned on the world’s first municipal firebox system.

[10:28] Pope would claim that his work didn’t build on the fire alarm, but he knew chanting in his partners, and he even claimed to have separately developed the fire alarm system and, in 18 52 letter to Scientific American.
Indeed, early in the autumn of 18 50 without having heard of Dr Channing’s earlier movement, I prepared the outline of a similar system of fire alarms, of which I deemed myself the original inventor.
I also exhibited to Neighbors and friends, a model which satisfactorily established the utility of the invention.

[11:00] Unlike an Alexander Graham Bell, Pope was, by far a part time inventor.
The profile, written about him only brings it up, is an afterthought, saying he was well versed in physics and had a great talent for mechanics.
He invented the electrical apparatus to alarm the inmates of a house against burglars.

[11:22] The burglar alarm was an afterthought in Pope’s life, a swell.
He invented the keys and the bell that we all know so well. But he did not invent a successful business plan.
He quickly came to view the burglar alarm as an unwanted distraction from his work as a minister and educator, with Karen Donnelly writing.
After Pope was granted his patent, he said about marketing the system.
He installed the device in several houses in Somerville, some without charge, so that it might be tested and its merits made known to the community.
He advertised in several newspapers, put a traveling salesman into the field, and in 18 56 he exhibited his new system at the fair of the Mechanics Charitable Association of Boston, where you received a diploma and a silver medal.
Although installed the system in a large boot and shoe factory near Boston, commercial success eluded him.
Pope’s duties is a clergyman would not permit him to doom or and being very much out of health.
He found it necessary to dispose of his patent.
When an offer came along in 18 57 he was happy to take it.
Businessman Edwin Holmes as his son, Edwin Thomas Holmes, would later write in the book A Wonderful 15 Years,
and the Year of the Great Financial Panic of 18 57 chanced upon a man by the name of Pope who had invented a device which, at the opening of a door window in a house, would ring a bell on the owner sleeping room.

[12:50] The idea appealed to Mr Holmes, who promptly bought the patent, and as electrical bells and other equipment were necessary.

[12:59] He paid $8000 in securities and about $1500 in cash for Popes, patent and hardware.
And then he sat down to try to figure out what to do with it.
At the time, Edwin Holmes was in his late thirties and, along with his brother, operated a shop that his son would call Ah Yankee Notion Store or what is now known as the Notion department in all of our large stores.

[13:24] Of course, the younger Holmes wrote that in 1917, and calling it a notion department didn’t really help me much.
I looked it up in. The first definition I could find online was a store selling haberdashery, which was super helpful.
After a little more research, I guess notions are all the things used in sewing and tailoring other than the cloth itself.
Button snaps, spools of thread and such and Yankee notions were specifically American made goods.
So Mr Holmes was selling American made sewing supplies at a shop at 17 Tremont Row.
Tremont Row also bears a bit of explanation because it no longer exists on a map of Boston,
depending on when you looked in who you asked Tremont Row was a retail center along what’s now Cambridge Street on Tremont Street, sort of between the Kinsale Restaurant and Kings Chapel.
Of course, that was before Government Center existed. So there was a warren of narrow streets like Brattle Cornhill in Exchange place, roughly where City Hall now stands along Tremont Row.
There are artists and auctioneers, publishers and shoemakers and eventually, photography studios.
17 Tremont Row, where the homes store Waas had been home to an artist, a piano teacher in a music publisher before homes moved in.
And it was the headquarters for John Harrington and company who specialized in hoop skirts and corsets after homes moved out.

[14:52] Speaking of hoop skirts, those elaborate garments have been growing in size and complexity for years, and they peaked in the late 18 fifties or early 18 sixties.
Whether or not you know exactly what they are, you’ve seen a hoop skirt in any movie set during the Civil War.
Just picture Vivian Leigh as Scarlett o Hara, greeting her suitors on the steps of Terra.
In the first act of Gone with the Wind, Edwin Holmes was an expert in making the wire armatures that formed the structure of a hoop skirt.
And is that when Thomas points out, that knowledge came in useful when he got into the electrical device business.

[15:32] It may be surprising to know that the only insulated wire to be had at this period was a very fine copper wire wound with silk, such as was used for the making of magnets in the various telegraph instruments.
The first problem presenting itself, therefore, was to procure a large size, insulated wire.
And it was just here that the hoop skirt experience of Mr Holmes’s earlier days became useful for after buying a number 18 bare copper wire, he would take it to a factory where the steel wire for hoop skirts was braided with cotton.
And here have his copper wire covered in a similar fashion.
It was, of course, there’s cotton wrapped copper wires that Edwin Thomas would then paint with greenhouse paint and wind up to dry in the family’s backyard.
Before the alarm business got so big that it needed a backyard wire factory, Edwin Senior would have to figure out a way to make the burglar alarm make some money.
His wife, Eliza, was confident writing. I feel that you will make $10,000 out of that burglar alarm patent.

[16:33] In hopes of proving her right, Edwin took a couple of steps. First he went to the shop at 109 Court Street, just down the block from his own shop and now a part of City Hall Plaza.
They’re in the storefront where Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone would be tested and first demonstrated was Charles Williams Shop.
Williams was one of the first manufacturers of electrical devices in the country and homes initial sales attempts that have been hard to convince home and business owners that an electrical gizmo could warn them of a break in.
So he turned to Williams to build a prototype.
Edwin Thomas’s book says that toe overcome the skepticism. Edwin Senior had a small house made with a door in front, a window on either side, a battery inside and a full sized bell on top.
And this he carried from store to store to demonstrate the truth of his assertions.
This little house, now acting, is Oclock case could be seen on my present office mantle.
Even then, men doubted that the opening of the door really did ring the bell.
The small house had an eight inch by 10 inch footprint, and it stood about 2 ft tall, including the alarm internals and a seven inch tall bell on top.
With the prototype in hand, Edwin Homes implemented Step two of his plan moving to New York City.

[17:55] In our thesis, Karen Donnelly explains that at the time the crime rate was escalating in New York and the public perception of crime was escalating even faster,
the changes wrought by urbanization presented opportunity for criminals and compounded the problem of controlling them.
In 17 89 New York had 33,000 inhabitants.
It was protected by only 32 night watchman and fewer daytime constables and marshals.
By 18 43 the population was estimated at 350,000 permanent residents and 50,000 transients.
The city employed 34 constables, 100 marshals and 1 12 watchman to serve this tremendously increased population.

[18:41] Although crime and disorder were not knew, there was a change in the perception of these issues between 1818 60.
David R. Johnson points out that during the first three decades of the century, criminal behavior increasingly seem to disturb the prevailing tranquility of urban society.
In the next three decades, many people became convinced that crime was about toe undermine their society.
Edwin Holmes apparently agreed with his son, Edwin Thomas.
Writing a half century later, Mr Holmes quickly made up his mind that all the burglars there were in the country were in New York and so decided to bring his family here, which he did in 18 59 locating in Brooklyn,
where most New England people settled, possibly feeling safer to be near Henry Ward Beecher’s church.

[19:31] As the elder homes began trying to sell his burglar alarm in New York, he focused on wealthy homeowners and the owners of cash rich businesses who would think that they were ripe for the picking.
As the purveyor of a wacky seeming new gadget, he had trouble getting audiences with many of them at first, While sales started slowly, homes also began making some improvements to the burglar alarm system to make it more effective.
As Edwin Junior describes, the original patent is purchased by Mr Holmes simply covered the ringing of a bell upon the opening of any window or door, and the lower part of the house next was introduced.
An indicator which, when the alarm was set at night, would designate the room in which a window had been left open when the house was closed, or in case of an alarm show in which room and opening had been made.

[20:21] Following the indicator improvement. Oclock attachment was next devised, which would disconnect the alarm in the morning so that the bell would not ring when the servants went down and later this same clock while switching off.
The alarm would also ring in the servants quarters. Another bell, which active is an alarm clock.

[20:39] With these improvements, homes began making some sales, which means that this is probably about the time when Edwin Thomas began painting cotton coded wires to insulate HM and his father’s backyard manufactory.
The springs in small parts that made up the keys for windows and doors, were sourced from a shop at Chatham Square.
And what’s now New York’s Chinatown.
However, all the electrical components of the burglar alarms that were being sold in New York were being manufactured back in Boston.
Throughout this period, homes continued to contract with Charles Williams back on Court Street in Boston to make the Elektronik bells that made his system tick.

[21:20] There was one final improvement that was needed to drive sales through the roof.
Central monitoring ring A bell in the owner’s bedroom is one thing.
But what if I told you that a room full of security guards could listen for your alarm from a headquarters located outside your home?
Now, how much would you pay?
In 1917 book Edwin Thomas described the development in the year 18 72 a plan for an electric lined cabinet to cover surround a jeweler Safe was thought out, developed and patented.
And then, instead of connecting these with a bell on the outside of the building to run the wires into a central office equipped with men day and night, who in case of an alarm could be instantly dispatched, tow, learn the cause of the alarm.

[22:08] The value of this was quickly realized by all the jewelers of Maiden Lane.
At the same time, waste for treating and protecting a bank fault were also worked out and were quickly recognized by bank officers.

[22:22] The company’s top floor office at 1 94 Broadway in Manhattan was soon connected by a tangled riot of wires to banks and jewelers all over the city.
That same year, the younger Holmes was pressed into service.
His father had sent Edwin Thomas Homes back to Boston in 18 69 as the business model came together,
in 18 72 I also opened a central office in Boston at the same time the one was being opened at 1 94 Broadway in New York.
Six months later, this Boston office had 13 banks since several jewelers establishments connected with it.

[23:00] Edwin Thomas got the Boston office Open at 3 42 Washington Street, just in time for it to witness one of the great calamities in Boston history, the younger Edwin wrote.
It was on the night of November 9th 18 72 when living in Brookline, that I was awakened to be told that there was a big fire raging down in the village.

[23:21] Dressing hastily and without a collar or tie, I hurried to the center of the town where I was told that Boston was burning up on that Saturday evening.
In 18 72 a fire broke out in the basement of a warehouse on Summer Street and what’s now Boston’s financial district.
It became known as Boston’s Great Fire, which we’ve talked about in passing, and one of these days we’ll do a full episode about it, Edwin Thomas continues.
I boarded a train about to leave for Boston and all that night and until noon the following Sunday, I was in the streets of Boston.
As the fire approached our newly equipped office, I directed everything to be removed.
With the exception of our Galvan 0 m case, which going to the hundreds of wires connected with it, I told them not to touch until I said so when falling bricks from the burning building in the rear of us broke the windows in our own office.
However, I directed that all the wires be cut in the case removed later, it proved that this was unnecessary, for with the exception of the broken windows.
No damage was done to our office.
On the following Sunday morning, I witnessed the contents of our new central office so needlessly uprooted, piled on the steps of the old courthouse.

[24:38] When the smoke cleared 12 hours after the fire started, a vast swath of 65 acres of the heart of the city had been completely destroyed.
The fire had been stopped nearly on the doorstep of Old South meeting house, just a few doors down from homes protection at 3 40 to Washington.

[24:57] The office have been spared, but only barely.

[25:02] With so much of the city being replaced by new construction, it was a perfect time to add burglar alarms to the new buildings.
After the fire, Home said that they had about 40 or 50 wires to replace. But that number soon multiplied.
Over the next few years, homes alarms became ubiquitous in banks, jewelry shops and other cash businesses.

[25:26] A few years later, Edwin Thomas Holmes was paying a visit to the shop of Charles Williams, where the electrical components for their alarms have been manufactured for almost 20 years.
And there he stumbled into the next chapter in his life story.

[25:42] In May 18 77 when I was located in Boston and on one of my frequent visits to William’s shop, I found him standing in hollowing into a box that stood on the top of the book rack in the corner of his desk in his little shop office.
Although his back was turned towards me, he realized that someone was behind him and turning. He saw me and laughed, for heaven’s sake, Williams. What have you got in that box? I said.
Oh, he replied. That is what that fellow out at Watson’s bench calls a telephone.
Watson, whose bench it waas was Thomas A.
Watson, whom Alexander Graham Bell famously placed the first ever phone call to less than a year earlier at that same court street shop, saying, Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you.

[26:32] The development of the telephone in Boston is another topic that deserves its own episode at some point.
But by the time Edwin Thomas Holmes got his first glimpse of the device, it was not yet a commercial success ballot, given many public demonstrations of the new device, including at the Centennial Exposition in Philly.
But just a few months before, Western Union had declined to buy his telephone patent, asking, What use could this company make? Oven electrical toy?

[27:01] That was basically how Holmes reacted as well, saying is that the instrument that I’ve seen squibs in the paper about saying that someone is attempting to talk over a wire, in fact, had talked from one point to another.
Yes, he said he and Watson have been working away at it for some time.

[27:20] At that time, a telephone was strictly a point to point device.
A wire would be strung between two buildings in this case, Charles Williams shop on Court Street and his home in Somerville.
A telephone was connected to either end of the wire, consisting of a six by six by 10 inch box with a hole in one end.
When the other person was on the line, you would shout into the hole, then quickly turn your head and hold your ear up to the whole to hear the response.
Each telephone could only be connected toe one other telephone, making its usefulness pretty limited.

[27:58] Edwin Thomas’s curiosity was piqued, and he started hanging around the Williams shop and watching development progress on telephone research.
Eventually, he became convinced that he could provide the same commercial success for the telephone that his father had provided for the burglar alarm, taking a good idea and working out how to turn it into a product.

[28:19] Holmes knew that for the telephone to be successful, a customer’s device had to be able to connect to any other customer.
It needed to be a one to many device, not 1 to 1, he also knew that he already had the backbone for that system, a 3 42 Washington street with its hundreds of wires leading out in every direction.

[28:39] In a wonderful 50 years, he wrote. After watching things for some time, I said one day to Mr Hubbard.
If you succeed in getting two or three of those things toe work well and will lend them to me, I will show them to Boston.
Gardner Hubbard was a principal investor in Alexander Graham Bell’s research.
Show them to Boston, he repeated. How will you do that?
Well, I said, I have a central office down at 3 42 Washington Street, from which I have individual wires running the most of the banks, many jeweller’s shops and other stores.
I can ring a bell in a bank from my office in the banking in return, ring one in my office by using switches and by giving a prearranged signal to the exchange bank, both of us could throw a switch, which would put the telephones in circuit, and we could talk together.
If you will send me three instruments, I could put another in the Haydn Leather Bank, and after I got Mr Bennett, the exchange bank.
I could call Mr Ripley at the Haydn Leather Bank and tell him that Mr Benyon wished to talk with him.
And with the third telephone and circuit at my office, I could hear that their conversation was successful.

[29:51] After looking at me with great surprise and much interests, Hubbard slapped me on the back and said, I will do it. Get your switches and other things ready.
If you’ve watched enough old movies and newsreels, you’ve probably seen telephone operators at work in front of a switchboard.

Clips:
[30:08] Long distance. Thank you. I am sorry. They do not answer. I will call you in about 20 minutes. Mr. Brown is not expected until tomorrow. Will you speak with anyone else?

Jake:
[30:20] If you’ve wondered why it was called a switchboard, it’s because the one that Edwin Thomas Holmes first assembled in his Washington street shop was made out of a 3 ft long piece of board with switches on it.
He wired it up, so with the flip of a switch, the wires from his burglar alarms would form a circuit with the switchboard,
then on the board itself for a series of plugs and patch cables that would allow him to connect the alarm cable from any customers business to the cable from any other business.

[30:49] He bolted this switchboard to the wall of his office, then put up a small shelf that would hold a tenant telephone.
Alexander Graham Bell sent over the telephones with serial numbers 67 and eight, and he put one on his shelf and the other two in the Exchange National Bank and the Heightened Weather Bank.
With this set up, a banker at the exchange could call up homes, his office and asked to be connected with the hide and leather.
Then homes could call over to make sure that Haydn leather was available before connecting the two directly.
They tested it and it worked.
Bell sent over to more phones, which homes put into two more banks.
And then he called the press, one of the Boston papers wrote the telephone.
Another successful Siris of experiments with the telephone was made yesterday afternoon at the rooms of professor homes, Electrician’s on Washington Street.
At this place, Mr T. M. Carter played several Cornett solos, which were heard distinctly at the rooms of Messers, Brewster Bassett and Company on Congress Street, at a branch office on Court Street and at Somerville.
In response, Mrs Williams sang several songs in Somerville, which were plainly heard at the three points above mentioned in This City, and singing from the Court Street office was heard in all other places.
Conversation was also carried on between the several points connected with perfect ease.

[32:16] In his 1910 history of the telephone, Herbert Cassin seemed less than impressed with Holmes’s invention.

[32:23] The little shelf, with its five telephones, was no more like the marvelous exchanges of today than a canoe is like a Cunard liner.
But it was unquestionably the first place where several telephone wires came together and could be united.

[32:39] Nevertheless, that demonstration proved the viability of the telephone, and Edwin Thomas Holmes came on board is the sixth employees of the Bell Telephone Association.

[32:50] He already had wires and hundreds of homes and businesses, and he started offering a service where the customer could use their telephone during the day, then switched the wire over to alarm service at night when they didn’t need the phone anyway,
he released the telephones from Bell for $10 per year per phone and charge each customer $5 a month.

[33:11] Homes started advertising, saying the above company proposes and is now prepared to establish direct telephonic communication between every business house in the city.
As the customer based grew home, set his mind to solving the new problems that arose writing.
I began by running four or five circuits in different directions from my office, each circuit having two wires on, one of which I expected to cut in about 25 telephones.
And from the other, I ran a wire called by Telegraph Man, a leg into the store, through a press knob and to ground pressing. The knob released a drop which, when falling, called the central office operators attention to the phone of that circuit.
We had it this time gotten the hand telephones, one of which was to be placed alongside the shipping clerks desk in the store.
And here came the first great obstacle.
We could not talk through all the telephones. And how are we going to cut them out of the circuit when not in use?
No such situation is This had arisen before. And how is it going to be met?
My thinking hours had to be increased and they ran into the small hours of the morning.
After several days at about 2 a.m. The brilliant thought came to me its own weight.

[34:31] At 4 a.m. I felt that I had really solved the question and went to bed in the morning. I hasten to William’s shop and meeting, Williams said.
I’ve got it, I’ve got it. Sure, its own weight will do it.
Whereupon a backboard was made in a long hook fast into the board in the middle’s that it would work like a child’s teeter.
It had a fork at the top end to hold the phone and to connecting plates at the bottom, which, when the phone was in the receptacle would by its own weight, closed the cutout switch at the bottom.
This was the first cut out telephones which ever made, and in similar form it has been part of every telephone since.

[35:11] Holmes had invented hanging up, and it was part of every telephone until the touch screen was invented.

[35:19] He also invented or rather hired the first telephone operator.

[35:25] For most of the era when telephone operators were needed, women served US operators, but the first one was a teenage boy named Frank More.
He happened to work in the homes, offices and assistant, so he was pressed into service.
Soon he moved on to other positions at the company. He was replaced by another boy and then another, and before long the homes company was employing five or six teenage boys at a time.
They were noisy, They were rude to the customers, and they started rough housing in the office.
As Edwin Thomas wrote, he quickly found a solution.
The thought came one day Why not have girls? I immediately engaged one young lady, the first female telephone operator.
Her presence at once changed the situation in the room, and from that time on, we engaged only girls for our switchboard work.
That first woman was Emma Nut, an 18 year old telegraph operator.
Customers loved her calm demeanor and smooth talking, and a few hours later her sister Stella became the second woman to work is an operator.
There were lots of women in need of work, and you didn’t have to pay women very much. So it was a bargain compared to paying teenage boys.
Women were also seen as having less power at least before the 1919 telephone operators strike, which is probably a topic for a different show.

[36:54] So his mass moments notes, it may have been a desirable job, but it was not an easy one.
Telephone companies had strict rules for all aspects of operators behavior on the job.
Nearly to get the job, a woman had to pass height, weight and arm length tests to ensure that she could work in the tight quarters. Afforded switchboard operators, operators had to sit with perfect posture for long hours and straight back chairs.
They were not permitted to communicate with each other.
They were to respond quickly, efficiently, impatiently, even when dealing with the most irascible customers.

[37:31] Nevertheless, women remained ubiquitous. A telephone switchboards until direct dialing became common starting in the 19 forties, allowing customers to dial their own phone numbers rather than telling an operator who they wanted to talk.
Thio Emma herself would work as an operator for over 30 years.
There were Sister Stella, lasted only a few months.
Back in New York, Edwin Senior adapted most of Edwin Thomas’s improvements.
Before the end of 18 78 he was selected as the president of the Bell telephone company.
Edwin Thomas would go back to New York in 18 82 and take over a new incarnation of home Security,
but not before he also invented party lines, which far outlived the switch from live operators to direct dial, becoming the oldest piece of telecommunications technology that I can personally remember.
In 18 79 Edwin Thomas remembered.
It was at this time that I had 144 subscribers to my local exchange,
acting under instructions from Mr Hubbard to make it cheap, I had put three and four subscribers on a single wire, and to call a party, you have to strike his signal on his bell,
1111 1111 111 etcetera.
Their exchanges today, working in the same way.

[38:58] As far as I know, there are no more party lines in America. But they still existed when I was in elementary school. In deepest Appalachia in the 19 eighties, our house shared a phone line with the will homes just up the road.
If the phone gave a single ring ring ring ring, it meant the call was for us.
But if it gave a double ring ring, ring, ring, ring ring ring that meant that the call was for the Wilhelms.
Likewise, if you picked up the receiver to make a call, you’d sometimes hear that someone at the Wilhelm house was already speaking.
So you just quietly set the receiver down and try again later.
If they were still talking when you tried again, you might gently clear your throat to get Sue Wilhelm’s attention and ask her if she could wrap up and clear the line soon so you could make a call.
I’ve always known that party lines were primitive compared to the phones we all use now, but I didn’t know that they were invented in Boston all the way back in 18 79.

Wrap Up

[40:07] Toe. Learn more about how to generations of the Holmes family made the burglar alarm and the telephone into viable products.
Check out this week’s show. Notes it. Hub history dot com slash 214 I’ll Have a Link toe.
Edwin Thomas Holmes. His book 50 Wonderful Years, Herbert Casson, 1910 History of the Telephone and Karen Donnelly’s 1992 thesis about the homes Burglar Alarm.
I’ll also include illustrations showing Edwin Thomas painting wire in the backyard, the first telephone switchboard and the forest of wires leading from the roof of 3 42 Washington Street.

[40:45] If you’d like to leave us some feedback, you can email us a podcast at hub history dot com.
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Music

Jake:
[41:42] Apple podcasts is still the most popular podcast app. If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing a PSA brief review.
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Music

Jake:
[41:59] Stay safe out there, listeners.