1930, when the US Senate tried to ban dial telephones [Telecom]

Reminds me of the arguments about why mere citizens should not be allowed to pump their own gas in a couple of US states. Or of the California assemblywoman who, in response to GMail, wanted to forbid computers from reading any part of an email.

New Jersey and Oregon still forbid citizens pumping their own gas.

Quite right, and both have gas prices significantly lower than adjacent states. We should ban self-service gas everywhere.

R's, John

On Sep 22, 8:12 pm, Thad Floryan The Nieman Journalism Lab points us to the news that, back in

According to various New York Times articles of 1930:

4/24 President Hoover, a heavy phone user, rejects dial phones for the White House. Only two trunks of twelve were to have dial service. 5/23: Senator Carter Glass explained his objection to dial: he didn't like being made an employee of the telephone company without compensation, "you need good light to see the dial", and "too easy to reach a wrong number." His fellow Senators cheered him on. The House was very interested in the Senate's manual service proposal. There was talk of banning dial phones for all of Washington. They said, "if we actually said what we thought of dial phones the Congressional record couldn't go through the mails". 5/24: NY Telephone says NYC subscribers are very happy with dial service and it would be impossible to provide manual operators to serve the volume and complexity of calls. 6/20: A C&P crew of 30 men came to the capitol on the deadline day to convert the Senate phones back to manual. The count of station sets was given variously as 450 or 811. 6/26: The Senate agrees to have a dual system of dial and manual phones. 7/13: NY Telephone estimates 2 million dial phones in NY State, 1.5 million in NYC. They were converting to automation as fast as possible, though the outlying sections of the city wouldn't get it until 1942. 12/15: NY Telephone announces a conversion from 3L-4N to 2L-5N in order to have more exchanges. There will be an overlap period. 12/15: A demonstration was made of direct dialing a call between NYC and Chicago.

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Comments:

In fairness to Sen. Glass, I had an older family member who was not a good 'dialer'. He was ok on local calls, but on long distance he would pause between digits so long that equipment would time out. To a young person or experienced techie today, the concept of dialing 1 then an area code seems very simple, but to an older person it was not so easy to learn. I saw plenty of older people have trouble in the early days of DDD. Indeed, in the early days of Teletype terminals, people had to get used to properly formatting strings of characters and hitting [return] at the end of the line.

Philadelphia made a similar 3L to 2L conversion circa 1946 but did not have an overlap period.

Somewhere I read the the White House _today_ still has a cord switchboard since that's the only way they can handle the President's needs. Don't know if true.

Back then the telephone company was very sensitive to subscriber reaction and went to great lengths to smooth the way toward automation. While many subscribers did like the advantages of automation, others felt as Senator Glass did that they now had to do the phone company's work and resented it. In small towns the telephone operator often provided special services, such as keeping track of where the town doctor was and calling volunteers and officials during a public safety emergency. In my town the retired town operator described to me performing these services as a young operator, when the town went dial she was transferred to a nearby city exchange which was far more regimentated.

When a community was about to switch to dial the phone company sent out considerable literature. It opened up training bureaus for walk- ins or even sent out people home to home to explain how to use the new phones. It also endeavored by various means to minimize full time permanent operators getting laid off.

Contrast that kind of personal approach to the concurrent threads about line maintenance troubles or billing issues.

Unfortunately these articles from 1930 are not available for free. Subscribers to the NYT can get them for free or one can purchase them. Some libraries may have free access to the NYT history on-line, and of course larger libraries have the traditional NYT index in hard copy and the full newspaper on microfilm. However, the following on the dial conversion of NYC in 1922 are available free and are interesting:

advance description

pre-test of dial equipment description another description overseas wireless--replacing alternators with vacuum tubes

[public replies, please]

I hope you were joking. :-)

I realize this is off-topic, but the above needs some clarification.

I cannot comment about New Jersey (it's been 45+ years since I was there to visit relatives), but Oregon has a less-expensive gas blend than California.

Self-service is a great convenience. I cannot recall any safety incident regarding self-service since I've been in California (1966).

My local gas station is 1/3 mile from my home and the pumps are open and available 24/7/365 though the station closes at 10pm. I usually buy gas around 1am-4am because I'm a "night person" and that's a convenient time for me, and I'm in-and-out in generally less than 3 minutes or so -- daytimes I'd have to queue for the pumps wasting time.

A friend in Pendleton OR was really PO'd about the lack of self-service gas stations in Oregon and recently moved to Reno NV.

I lament the 17 cents per gallon I used to pay for premium gas at the full-serve stations in Texas and New Mexico circa early 1960s. :-)

***** Moderator's Note *****

ObTelecom: Dial vs. Manual, Self-serve vs. attendant; it's the same thing. My father use to say "They'll spend a million dollars to eliminate your job", and he was right: machines are always cheaper than men.

Bill Horne Moderator

John Henry said to his captain, "A man is nothing but a man, But before I let your steam drill beat me down, I'd die with a hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord, I'd die with a hammer in my hand."

He was right, too. In the 1940s when my mother was in college in Massachusetts, she would call her parents in Vermont, and the town's operator would say "you mother's playing bridge at the Smith's -- should I call her there?" Try and find a dial exchange that can do that.

R's, John

Source:

State Gas taxes:

New Jersey $0.145/gal New York 0.24 Pensylvania 0.311

Maybe the price difference is due to the tax.

Oregon 0.24/gal California 0.18 Washington 0.28

CA has a lower gas tax. But has special requirements for the fuel, which ups the price from the price from the refinery.

Also, areas of CA adjacent to OR are rural which tend to have higher gas prices in general. I live in Pahrump, NV (gas tax $.23/gal.) on the CA-NV border. 25 miles away in Shoshone, CA, at the entrance to Death Valley, their one gas station charges a dollar/gallon more than in Pahrump.

Dick

I'd seriously doubt that he moved to Reno in order to avoid full-service gas stations. Truth be told, prices are set by demand, nothing less, nothing more. You don't believe me?

Here are the national gasoline prices by state. Note that the CHEAPEST is New Jersey ($2.46), a full service state. Note that Oregon, another full service state is a shade CHEAPER than California, a SELF service state, ($2.90 to $2.95).

Again, prices for any commodity are set based on demand, nothing more, nothing less.

This kind of service is still available. You can get it from a call center, also known as a telephone answering service. Yes, these are still in business, and yes, they still offer personalized service. Obviously you have to shop around to see what the various companies offer, but the service is still available.

+--------------- | In small towns the telephone operator often provided special services, | such as keeping track of where the town doctor was and calling volunteers | and officials during a public safety emergency. ... +---------------

Of course, those "special services" could be abused to provide favoritism, especially if the operator was a relative of one of the relevant providers [or had some other covert connection]. In fact, legend has it that that's where the dial phone came from in the first place:

... Convinced that it should be subscribers, rather than the operator, who chose who was called --- anecdotally, Strowger's undertaking business was losing clients to a competitor whose telephone-operator wife was intercepting and redirecting everyone who called Strowger -- he first conceived his invention in 1888, and patented the automatic telephone exchange in 1891. It is reported that he initially constructed a model of his invention from a round collar box and some straight pins.

-Rob

----- Rob Warnock

627 26th Avenue San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607

You are leaving out another form of gas station, the unattended commercial "card lock" station, where you swipe a gas company credit card, punch a PIN into the fuel pump, and it authorizes and turns on the pump, with no human, other than the trucker anywhere on the site. Normally for diesel pumps with high speed (25 to 50 gallons per minute) nozzles.

They *DO* exist. Various kinds of 'follow me' services. You tell it where you are, and when someone calls you, it rings 'where you are'.

I have an _early_ PC-based voice-mail system that does it, the hard way. it answers a call, plays a 'please wait' announcement, hook-flashes to get the other side of three-way calling, dials where I've told it I can be found, plays an announcement to whomever answers, to get me to come to the phone, I punch in a password, and the box hook-flashes again, to make it a 3-way call, and the conversation proceeds.

The C.O. based services do it one better -- they 'call-forward' the initial call.

I have also seen such unattended stations with automobile pumps that take both 'plastic' and cash through banknote acceptor slots.