by Irving Fang and Ann Norris
ISBN: 1-933-01173-4
Cost: $15.00
Before the invention of the telephone people could not talk to anyone they
could not see. Did you want to communicate with a friend? A visit or a letter
was the only way. To call the fire department, someone had to jump on a
horse and gallop, or run on foot. No one called a doctor or a hospital.
No one called the police department. You went.
Living alone posed a special danger, particularly out in the country. And what
about working in a mine? How do you communicate with the surface when something
goes wrong below?
Construction upward was also restricted by a lack of communication. Skyscrapers waited for the telephone.
We can laugh today about the hotel that got into trouble for letting any guest use a phone, and the fellow who was scolded for calling the fire department. But consider that not long ago the Bel Air fire department in a rich Los Angeles suburb had an unlisted number! They didn’t want just anyone to call them to report a fire.
Telephone is the fourth in the 11-volume series, The Story of Communication. It begins by describing how life was before telephones, then looks at how the telegraph and then the telephone changed the way we live. Telephone carries us to the present day, when cellphones can pull together a “flash mob” of young people to stage a street protest or surround a celebrity.
