Re: "All the President's Men" (Still More Movie Phone Trivial)

Washington, DC had quite a few ESS offices when Watergate happened,
> which is a different environment than "Wrong Number" or "Dial M for > Murder." ;-)

"Quite a few"? In 1973-74 ESS was still relatively new as a production item. I dare say that within a city most would be served by panel or #1 XBAR, maybe a few exchanges with ESS. Anyway, in

1973-74 I think most subscribers still had plain vanilla dial telephone service. In affluent neighborhoods, many people might have Touch Tone.

My impressions of newspaper telephone service and hardware was based on visits to a major city paper of that time.

But, typewriters had come a long way, with correcting Selectrics. ;-)

I'm not sure when correcting Selectrics came out, but I think it was after '74. In any event, they were a premium expensive model, probably more found with executive secretaries than with junior reporters. In those years, the secretary to a manager had a nice electric typewriter, but those using a typewriter for routine work (ie bank clerk or librarian) had manuals. (Remington and Underwood both made very nice manuals in that time frame.) By 1980 things would be very different, but it was a slow transition. Typewriters were rather expensive.

When Watergate happened, the only mobile phones were those giant > bricks mounted in the car, and which transmitted and received in the > open on VHF low, where every sharp kid with a scanner could hear the > conversation with ease. ;-)

There were only a few frequencies available and a huge waiting list for mobile service despite the high cost. But in those days, when more people were in a city, payphones were everywhere. Lobbies of office buildings had banks of them (nice ones with a tiny chair, table, fan, light, and closed door). Often every floor of a commercial building had one too, in addition to the lobby bank.

For some reason I don't know, when Bell and Motorola applied to test new cell service, the FCC sat on it for two years.

The phones on the new Metroliner train (introduced 1969) were an early type of cellular service (albeit huge cells), but the principle of automatic handoff of call from one cell to the next was proven with that. To the caller, the phone was a standard pay phone with dial direct service. Somewhere online is a Bell Labs article describing it. Neat little system.

I understand the Feds later yanked the frequencies away from the train, ironically, to use for White House communications.

Some commuter railroads later made a big deal of having mobile pay phones available on their trains, which was a neat service. But within just a few years those phones became obsolete as people got their own cell phones.

Sadly, the daily newspaper is going the way of the buggy whip.

Society will suffer as a result. Certainly news via the 'net has benefits. But a printed newpspaer is something of _record_ which is important, not fleeting eletrons on a screen. Newspaper articles have far more depth.