The Telephone: Making Connections
By Jennie Shurtleff
Telephone communications have changed immensely since I was a child. When I was growing up, my family only had one phone in our home. It was a large, black rotary dial telephone that was affixed to a wall, and it had a “party” line. For those who are unfamiliar with the term “party line,” it’s not quite as fun as it sounds. Rather than being a designated line where everyone gets on the telephone to socialize and party, it was a system where neighbors essentially shared telephone access. When the phone rang, we didn’t immediately answer it. Instead we listened to the pattern of short and long rings to distinguish if the call was for us or for someone else on our party line. When we wanted to make a call, we would sometimes lift up the receiver only to find that one of our neighbors was already using the line. In those cases, we’d quickly hang up the phone and then check back periodically to determine when their call was over so that we could place our call.
We were fortunate that everyone with whom we shared the party line used the phone sparingly so that it was generally available if anyone needed it. In turn, my parents always requested that our friends not call our house after 8:00 at night. Although we were still wide awake, some of our neighbors went to bed early, and since the phone would ring at all the houses on the party line, my parents didn’t wish to disturb any of the neighbors who might be sleeping. The consideration that people showed one another included respecting each other’s privacy. This was not the case for all party lines. My father would often tell about the party line that his family had when he was growing up, which included a neighbor who liked to eavesdrop. This particular neighbor had canaries that would chirp, and if one was on the phone and could hear canaries in the background, one knew that neighbor was also included on the call. Ultimately, some of the neighbors developed a code system, using references to the weather, as a way of sharing information that they didn’t wish to be public knowledge.
Detail from photo of early telephone office
Collection of the Woodstock History Center
Advertisement from the January 28, 1915, Vermont Standard
Despite some shortcomings with the early telephone system, telephones did revolutionized communications, although perhaps not as much as the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company optimistically predicted. In 1915, an advertisement placed by that company heralded the social changes that it claimed would result from the transcontinental telephone system. The ad depicts a classically-dressed woman wearing a tainia, or headband, bearing the word “science.” Her arms are outstretched, coast to coast, with the United States before her, and in each hand she is holding a telephone. The headline “The Triumph of Science” is followed by “This busy, progressive nation is today at the dawn of a new era of commercial and social development. This means by which the human voice, with its slightest inflections and indications of personality can be carried across the continent instantly, have been provided. Talking by telephone from the Atlantic to the Pacific is now an accomplished fact.”
The advertisement goes on to assert, “The imagination can but feebly grasp, much less attempt to measure, the far-reaching significance of such a tremendous accomplishment. One hundred million people will have for their daily use a system of communication that knows no East, no West, no North, no South. Dialects, provincialisms, sectional prejudices, must eventually yield to the closer union, the better understanding, the more intimate comradeship that the human voice establishes. The neighborliness of a whole nation is advanced by the brushing away of the physical restraints of centuries.”
Advertisement from the June 12, 1952, TheVermont Standard
Another ad placed by the telephone company in the Vermont Standard in 1952 also underscores the excitement of gaining telephone service. This one depicts a young boy and his dog with the line, “Don’t bite him, Wolf… he’s the Telephone Man!” The ad then explains how busy the telephone company has been adding and upgrading telephone service for customers throughout Vermont. It states, “Since 1946, the Telephone Company in Vermont has added 22,000 new telephones, converted 24,700 telephones to dial, constructed 6 new buildings and building additions and has given 31,000 customers enlarged local calling areas…”
As with the rest of Vermont, in Woodstock, the telephone system went through several different stages or upgrades.
Early on, Woodstock had a magneto type telephone system. A magneto is a hand-cranked electrical generator. These hand-cranked generators were in the telephone, and they produced current that enabled the caller to ring the bells to signal other individuals who were on their line as well as reach their telephone exchange operator. A telephone operator could then connect callers to those who were not on their party line. When one had completed a connected call using the magneto system, both callers would crank the generators for their telephones to let the operator at the exchange switchboard know that they had completed their call and were “ringing” off.
1917 Magneto telephone illustration, public domain
Ada Maynes working as a telephone operator at the Elm Street telephone office
Collection of the Woodstock History Center
In 1938, Woodstock was ready for a telephone upgrade. According to an article published in the Vermont Standard on March 24, 1938, “Turning the crank to signal the telephone operator will soon be a thing of the past in Woodstock, for at 12:15 p.m. on Wednesday, March 30th, the office on Elm Street, with its modern switchboard, will go into service… Hereafter when a Woodstock subscriber wants to telephone, he will simply lift the receiver from the holder. Immediately a small light on the switchboard in front of the operator will signal that someone is calling, and she will take the call. When the conversation is finished, it won’t be necessary to turn the crank to advise their operator. All the subscriber need do is replace the receiver, and another light at the switchboard will indicate to the operator that the conversation is finished, and that she can take down the connection.”
By 1963 Woodstock was poised for another major telephone upgrade — the dial system. This new system allowed people to dial their own calls instead of going through an operator. At that time, the service at the exchange on Elm Street was discontinued, and the service was transferred to the large building on Golf Avenue where the automatic dial equipment was located.
The first call that was made on this new dial system was placed by two Woodstock town officials, George M. Nelson and Fred Clarke. They decided to call one of the other Woodstocks in the country, and settled on Woodstock, Illinois. With the new system, they were able to dial their call and speak directly to a Mr. Emricson, the mayor of Woodstock, Illinois, who shared the following: “There are 56 Woodstocks, world wide, and Woodstock, Vermont, was the third in the line to be founded... The first one was in Oxfordshire, England and the second was in Connecticut.” Mr. Emricson then went on to note that a Joel Johnson esq., left Woodstock, Vermont, to seek his fortune in the west. Johnson “settled in what came to be known as Centerville, Ill, but later on his recommendation, the town was named Woodstock in 1845.”
Thus, the telephone allowed Mr. Nelson and Mr. Clarke of Woodstock, Vermont, to learn more about a town nearly a thousand miles away, as well as to learn more about their own town. That day, and many others, the telephone has brought people closer together… just as the 1915 New England Telephone and Telegraph advertisement had predicted.
First Woodstock dial call in 1963. The men are speaking with the mayor of Woodstock, Illinois.
Photo from The Vermont Standard.