On this day in 1951, the mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, called the mayor of Alameda, California, using a direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service for the first time with what we today take for granted--three digits were added to the number dialed. The mayors started kibitzing 18 seconds after dialing. Prior to this day in 1951, coast-to-coast calls were placed by long-distance operators although calls between local towns had been available since the 1930s. By 1965, 90% of all telephones used the new service via switching centers, a national numbering plan, and a billing system capable of processing millions of transactions automatically.
In October 2000, Jerry Zeveney spoke to the North Mountain Historical Society and told a story from sometime in the mid-1950s when he helped change the Benton telephone system from an operator system and switchboard to the dial system. Benton telephone operators like Mrs. Arley Meeker and Ella Laubach would get calls, for example, where the caller wanted to speak to his father and would ask the operator if she knew where he might be. Often the operator, from listening to previous calls, knew where the man was and would dial him there.
In a world where the youth learn to navigate on their own through questions and answers of a privative level ("Is that order for here or to go?"), the concept of asking someone to make your telephone calls is hard to understand. One of the most unpleasant parts of a telephone operator's work was putting up with complaints of people who got tired of delays and improperly-routed phone calls.
I found this actual phone call from a newspaper dated 1905. The telephone operator is telling the story. She begins the call by saying "This is long distance." There was no response. Again. "This is long distance." Again, no response. "Hello, what is it, please--?"
| A shrill, female voice in reply, "Hello." "Yes, what is it, please?" "Who is this?" "This is long distance." "I want the toll board." "This is the toll board." "Is this the toll board?" "Yes" "Well, I want to talk over the long-distance telephone. How much will it cost me?" "To what place do you wish to talk?" "I want to talk out of town." What place do you want?" "Out in Kansas." "What is the name of the town?" "They live in the country." "Have they a telephone?" "Yes, ma'am." "Well, with what town is their telephone connected?" "Well, I guess I don't want to talk today." |
Here is the record of another telephone call from about the same period.
| "This is long distance." "I want Topeka." "Who do you want there?" "I want to talk to mamma. We have a telephone in the house." "What is your mother's name?" "Oh, Mrs. H. K. Wheeler." "At what number are you?" "Oh, I don't know. I just came in the drug store to telephone." "Please ask someone the number." "Oh, here it is. It's 30,270,084." "That cannot be the number. You had better ask someone." "All right, wait a minute." |
The caller hung up the receiver and was irate when she picked up the phone and long distance wasn't waiting for her when she came back.
The life of a "central girl" must have been difficult. As I remember seeing switchboards as a kid, the operator answered calls amid a mass of plugs and holes and keys and switches and lines and lights. You had to wonder how under the sun she pulled the right plug to the right hole at the right minute and in the right way from that muddle of connections.
For readers who are used to Vonage, BlackBerry cell phones, iPhones or VoIP, here is a brief explanation of how the whole thing worked via the switchboard. If you wanted to call Aunt Tessie at the north end of town, a little light would flash on the operator's desk among the conglomerations of lines and lights which she faced. Like a flash, her hand would dart to grab a plug and spear the hole beside that light. You provided your number if you were from a large town or city, but locally your voice would be instantly recognized by Mrs. Meeker, the local switchboard operator, and comments would be exchanged about the weather or how nice a neighbor looked at church. In the larger towns, however, it was all business.
Like a flash, the operator pulled the correct plug and inserted it into the correct hole above her head. Then, while answering a dozen other calls by spearing a dozen other lights and directing a dozen other plugs to a dozen other holes with a dozen and one things to do at once, she had enough presence of mind to find out whether you got your party and to ring again for you if you didn't.
The nation probably long debated whether instant service could rise from the intricacies of the switchboards as hundreds of patrons wanted immediate, upon-demand phone connections. You decide. Here are some actual questions asked of switchboard operators and recorded in a newspaper article from 1921.
| "Central, I just came back from the parade. Has anyone called me?" "Central, can you tell me if Mrs. Baltuff has gone to New York? She said she was going." "Oh, is that the wrong number? Well, I was answering an ad in the paper. Maybe you can tell me if they have anyone already?" "Central. I'm going shopping. If anyone calls me, will you tell them to call me this afternoon?" "Oh, is their telephone taken out? Well, Central, can you tell me who lives next door to them?" "Can you tell me the name and number of a man with one leg who lives in the country, somewhere near Elk River?" --Grand Forks Herald, August 14, 1921 |
There are always human-interest telephone-operator stories, but one of my favorites was printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer in its edition of December 25, 1922. The previous day ammonia fumes escaping from a large tank which exploded in New York city endangered sixty-three patients who "were saved from harm by the presence of mind of the telephone switchboard operator." The woman "remained at her post after telephoning the head nurse in each ward of the hospital to close all hall doors and open the windows. She gave the alarm to fire and police headquarters." When all were safe, she "fell from her chair in a swoon."
If we were to trace the development of the telephone, we would note the anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell's invention, the anniversary of the first telephone line and the first switchboard. It was in 1877 when a single wire was hung from the factory in Boston where Bell's instruments were made to his home in Somerville, a couple of miles away in the suburbs--a crude ancestor to the millions of miles of phone lines now in use.
Several wires coming from the common center were for the first time interconnected by a crude device which became the switchboard of which we wrote Monday. Next to the telephone itself, the switchboard was the most necessary feature of the communications system.
Boston had a company in 1877 which provided electrical burglar-alarm service via a central station where the alarm signals were located, connected by wires with the buildings of its various subscribers, mostly bankers and store owners. These lines and central station were rigged as an experimental-telephone exchange. Telephones were attached to five circuits--four related to banking and one in the office of the manufacturer of the instrument. Wires were connected and conversations began.
The crude apparatus for making the connections was hardly a switchboard, but served as the basis for the idea for a real telephone-central office. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, a private telegraph system was connected to the office of inventor Thomas B. Doolittle, who attached a telephone to the telegraph wires, modified the switchboard so that it could be manipulated by an operator, and added some signal bells to get the operator's attention. Twenty subscribers were connected. The idea spread like wildfire. By the end of June 1877, a reported 230 telephones were in regular use--230 telephones in the whole world! By March 1881, there were only nine cities of more than 10,000 and only one of more that 15,000 without a telephone exchange.
The curious contraptions they called switchboards back then used signal bells of different tones to indicate which line was ringing. At first a generator crank was turned on the side of the telephone. The "common-battery" switchboard came next where the operator's signal was given by a tiny incandescent electric lamp. A "common-battery" switchboard was one in which the electrical energy was supplied at the central office, instead of battery jars in the basement of the subscribers' house. With the common battery board, the lifting of the telephone receiver from the hook called the operator's attention.
Some early switchboards were so large that boys ran from one point to another as the calls came in. Others were like elongated tables, the switch sockets fit into the flat top and the cords for connecting them suspended from the ceiling. All were slow and clumsy. Switchboards for communities like Benton were much smaller.
Dedicated women connected people to the outside world from a store attached to their residence, from their home or from a small office located in a commercial district. Here is a representative sampling of early phone service.
• Orangeville
The Orangeville Telephone Company, organized in the Forks railroad station, connected with the Bell Telephone Exchange in Bloomsburg and the North Central Company in Benton. McClellan Megargel, great grandfather of Gloria Megargel Miller, Orangeville, handled the switchboard duties from his home in Orangeville, along with his wife and daughter. At its best, the phone company had about 250 subscribers. Andrew J. Sordoni eventually acquired the company October 3, 1951, for $4,000. The company eventually became part of the Commonwealth Telephone System, Dallas.
• Millville
The telephone company began in 1895 when lines were strung in the Borough. The company operated under the name United Telephone Company. Its switchboard was on the second floor in the Shuman Building, adjacent to the bank, according to Harry Watts and Art Albertson. Art's grandmother, Luella Smith, was the manager and Ada Smith Stroup was chief operator for a time. Art remembered how people would get stuck in the snow and his mother would have to trudge through the snow to get people to dig them out. Often the person being called actually didn't have a telephone and the number of telephones in the Borough of Millville was limited. The operator waited for rings on the phone 24 hours a day. Art, 85, said that he began hearing about phone service as soon as he could remember anything after he was born in 1923. Ada later was transferred to the Sunbury long-distance center where she became chief operator. Arla Mea Miller, the seventh generation of the Eves family, founders of Millville, was helpful in sorting out later formation of the Peoples Ideal Telephone Company whose territory ranged toward Jerseytown and Strawberry Ridge. The Bell system eventually took over the company.
Daisie Utt, Rohrsburg, had a phone on two opposite walls of her kitchen in order to provide joint switchboard capability--one with the Benton line provided by Sordoni and one the Greenwood service. When someone needed to call Wilkes-Barre area from Greenwood they would call Daisie and she would go from one phone to the other and make the call on the other phone. She would then transfer messages to the caller. It was dangerous to be in the kitchen between the phones during a heavy thunder storm, Don Miller remembers. One time when Ken Kelsey was in the service, Ken called to have a message transferred to his folks in Derrs.
• Greenwood
The Greenwood Telephone Company was actually a collection of individual phone companies (Chestnut Grove Mutual Telephone Company, Mt. Pleasant and Pine Grove Telephone Company, Rohrsburg Telephone Company, Sereno Enterprise Telephone Company and the Welliver Telephone Company) built and maintained by subscribers on that party line. These small party lines intersected at the Greenwood store, at the intersection of two dirt roads between Millville and Rohrsburg. Elmer Parker owned the store and was postmaster and was the operator for many years. Phebe Hartman later was a switchboard operator in the small grocery store owned by her and her husband Dave Hartman, Max Hartman remembers. Max was "fascinated looking at all the wires and plugs when visiting the store." Arden Heath was a line caretaker for Greenwood. Derrs was on that line. After each storm, Arden would go out checking lines.
• Benton
During the switchboard years, Benton used a magneto system in lieu of a common-battery system. With a magneto system, the customer turned a crank and a window dropped and a lady answered. With a common-battery system, the customer picked up the receiver and it automatically dropped a window. In each house, there were three dry-cell batteries in the basement of 1½ watts each. That is what was used for the talking power to get the range up to 17 miles. Inside the phone, there was a three- or a four-bar magnet. The customer turned a crank and that activated the magneto and provided the ringing power.
Stockholders of the Northern Central Telephone Company met in June 1930 and voted to sell the buildings and assets of the company to a Dallas Company that had been around since 1897, a company by the name of Commonwealth Telephone Company. Local-service lines were in need of upgrading and even the office of the company showed signs of wear. The transfer of assets was made to Commonwealth, a company that had only been taken over two years before by state senator Andrew J. Sordoni. Switchboard operator Myrtle Meeker had her office in the back of the house on the south side of the former Horace Harrison IGA store, Main Street.
They later enlarged the building. The building was full from the floor to the ceiling with switching, row upon row, and rolling ladders.
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They later enlarged the switching unit and moved to Green Acres Drive and Route 487. |
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If you go in the present building, it is of a size large enough to play handball. The guts of the place is no bigger than a deep freeze. The computers are in there. |
The buildings at Waller and Divide are actually central offices, but they are out in the field, but they actually have the same equipment that this building has in it.
This picture, entitled "Preparing The Benton Area for Automatic Service" appeared in a Sordoni Topics column. Bill Benscoter, foreman, and his crew photographed while rebuilding a pole line in the Benton exchange area in preparation for dial conversion. Standing left to right are G. C. Cotterman, district manager, Shickshinny; Bill Benscoter, foreman; Charles Searfoss and Russell Connor. Kneeling are Ted Whitenight, the man Jerry Zeveney replaced when Ted entered the service, Howard Stedman and Delbert Cragle.
The first changeover in Benton, Jerry Zeveney remembers, was to a relay-o-matic switch system. gang switches and lots of circuits. It took seven switches to complete a call. When the customer picked up the receiver, they got a line finder. Each switch did a different thing. Benton went to "cross-bar" switching, which meant that it switched moved both vertically and horizontally.
• Jamison City
The Northern Central Telephone Company and the Bloomsburg and Sullivan Railroad Company petitioned the Public Service Commission of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania December 19, 1914, to enter into a lease agreement whereby the railroad company could place a telegraph wire on the pole line of the telephone company between Benton and Jamison city. This petition was approved January 30, 1915.
• Shickshinny
The phone company was originally the Luzerne Telephone Company, then it was acquired by Commonwealth and was managed by a Mr. Cotterman, Jerry Zeveney remembers. It was located at the Mountain Inn. That building at the location of the Borough Building, was later torn down. The phone operation then moved to Route 11 with the managers living upstairs.
• Huntington Mills
Operators were Mrs. Beach, grandmother of Gary Beach, Waller, Jennie Harvey and Anna Killian. The "switch" was in John and Jennie Harvey's home until the block building was constructed a few steps away, Dick McMichael remembers. Dick, now a resident of Camp Hill, made calls by "ringing up the operator and saying, "Aunt Anna, please connect me to Uncle Fred." Ann passed away at the age of 103.
Luzerne Telephone Company had its office in the former Mountain Inn, Shickshinny. This building was later torn down to make way for the Shickshinny Borough Building and the phone office moved to Route 11. The Commonwealth Telephone Company, owned by Andrew J. Sardoni, acquired this company in 1928. Commonwealth and its successor companies have served Benton and the surrounding area since.
There were other companies, too. Danville, for example, had the Montour and Columbia Company with exchanges in the City Hotel and in the Opera House. Others included the Buckhorn Telephone Company (1905-1951), Briar Creek Township had the Mountain Springs Telephone Company. There was a Fowlersville Telephone Company, plus a company at Catawissa, Lake Nuangola and Wapwallopen.
Dick Shoemaker's uncle had the care of the Buckhorn line consisting of 14 people in the Frosty Valley area. Dick would go with his uncle when the phones were down. They spent long hours driving along dirt roads and taking tree limbs off the uninsulated wires and changing batteries in the telephones. Those were the days when everyone would listen in when the phone rang and all would get in on the talking. After three or four people tuned in, the sound got weaker and when you wanted the operator you rang one long and you could ring your neighbors a code like three shorts. Everyone had a ring such as a long and a short, two shorts, two longs, a long and a short, etc. It was fun and everyone knew the business of everyone else.
Commonwealth Telephone Enterprises, Inc., originated in 1897 when Bert Stroh built a grounded-telephone circuit between his home and that of a neighbor in Centermoreland. The results were the Centermoreland Telephone Company, which then merged in 1905 with the Northern Lackawanna Telephone Company and created Commonwealth Telephone Company. Andrew J. Sordoni bought Commonwealth Telephone Company in 1928 when the company was valued at nearly $1 million. Luzerne Telephone Company, Bradford Telephone Company and Commonwealth Telephone Company merged in 1950 into a corporation called Commonwealth Telephone Company and two years later Commonwealth Telephone Company became a publicly owned corporation.
Gerald Zeveney, Mendenhall Lane, worked for Commonwealth Telephone Company for many years. When he started working, the phone system consisted of telephones on the wall with a crank on the side to be turned to call the operator or someone else on the party line. Each person on the party line had a distinctive ring. People could listen in on other people's calls and this often happened, especially if neighbors knew someone in the family was sick. Also, sometimes the receiver would not be returned to the phone properly. If this happened no one on the party line could use their phone until the receiver was hung up properly. Use of the party line required patience and cooperation. In 1948 Jerry worked to change the Benton System using operators and a switchboard to the dial system. Gerry retired when Commonwealth went to the digital system.
Maureen Longnecker shared a story from the days when she was growing up in Dotyville. She recalled that she was about 12 when she and a friend were exploring the countryside when she realized there was no way to get back home when she was supposed to be home. Let's let Maureen tell the story: "We stopped at a house so I could call my parents and let them know I was okay, but would be late. When I picked up the receiver, there were two older ladies enjoying a newsy chat on the party line. They were in no hurry to get off. I kept checking every little bit, but after 20 minutes they were still on the line. By that time, I knew Dad and Mom would be worried about me if I didn't call, because I was already late, and it was going to take a long time for me to walk home. I waited a bit longer and then interrupted and politely asked if I could make a quick call. Obviously unhappy with me, they questioned my need to make the call, and indicated that if it was an emergency, they would get off the line. I told them it sort of was an emergency, so they begrudgingly hung up. My Mom answered my call, and I told her I'd be late. After Mom hung up, I was just about to hang up as well, when I heard a very indignant voice say, "That WASN'T an emergency!!" I was startled that the lady had listened in on my call, but I managed to respond, "Ma'am, if you knew my Mom, you'd KNOW that WAS an emergency!"
Benton's old Northern Central Telephone Company was hurting from the devastation of the 1929 stock market crash, service lines needed updating and replacing and the lack of capital precluded the growth that the company needed to achieve in order to survive. The company was too small to compete. The company voted to sell to the Commonwealth Telephone Company.
Andrew John Sordoni, Kingston, was born in Nanticoke in 1887, the son of an immigrant freedom fighter. He was a general contractor (Sordoni Construction Company) and a member of the Pennsylvania state senate from 1927-1938, a delegate to the Republican National Convention from Pennsylvania in 1928, the owner of 14 companies, including six hotels and he directed during his lifetime an estimated 40 other companies.
Commonwealth Telephone Company was owned by the Sardoni family of Wilkes-Barre from 1928 to 1993 when the family sold to the company that became Level 3 Communications. Eldorado Equity Holdings, Inc., a wholly-owned unit of Level 3 Communications Inc. later sold $159 million of Commonwealth Telephone Enterprises Inc. Commonwealth Telephone Enterprises Inc was sold for $1.15 billion in cash and stock to a Stamford, Connecticut-based company, Citizens Communications Co. The combined company catered to rural markets in 23 states. Citizens Communications Company later changed its name to Frontier Communications Corporation (NYSE: FTR). Frontier Commonwealth Telephone, founded in 1905, provides telephone service to the Benton area, operating mostly in eastern Pennsylvania.
We would be remiss if we didn't mention the last town to use the old-time crank telephone system. According to the May 6, 1977, edition of the Dallas Morning News, Mouth of Seneca, West Virginia, a four-hour drive from our nation's capitol, still used the crank, "talk-to-the-operator" system with about 20 subscribers on the party line. That system was replaced May 21, 1977. The night-time switchboard operator was the local minister. The phone company was the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks Telephone Co. Funding for the upgrade came from the Rural Electrification Association. The new system cost $1.38 million.
