Another excerpt I read this morning from John Brooks’ “Telephone: The First Hundred Years” (now sadly out of print, but recommended to anyone who is captivated by the Bell saga):
Apart from policy differences within the company, there were technical problems. … The switching of a trolley car or the sputtering of an electric street lamp would cause all telephone lines in the vicinity to give off a racket that was all but deafening. And when man-made electrical inductions did not assault telephone users’ eardrums, natural electricity did. The approach of a thunderstorm in those days could be detected by the rising telephone static long before a cloud had appeared in the sky, and at the height of such a storm, telephones in the area were unusable. As Herbert N. Casson summed up the whole situation:Such a jangle of meaningless noises had never been heard by human ears. There were sputtering and bubbling, jerking and rasping, whistling and screaming. There were the rustling of leaves, the croaking of frogs, the hissing of steam, the flapping of birds’ wings. There were clicks from telegraph wires, scraps of talk from other telephones, and curious little squeals that were unlike any known sound. The lines running east and west were noisier than the lines running north and south. The night was noisier than the day, and at the ghostly hour of midnight the babel was at its height.
Previously • Even in the 19th Century, Japanese Sounded Like the Future
Photo: Library of Congress
Ladies and Gentleman I give you the earliest review of a Godspeed You Black Emperor! album!
Ha!
This is awesome, it reminds me of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol stories about Alexander Graham Bell and the new demons created by the invention of the telephone.
where can I find a recording!!
The static before a storm sounds like a feature! I want my phone to tell me there’s a thunderstorm on the way.