> With all due respect, Bell/W.E. did not design
>> SxS. That was done by, or at the behest of, a Kansas
>> City undertaker named Strowger, as I recall.
>Correct. And, his incentive was to stop his competitors from spying on
>his business via the manual system.
Not quite Sam. The way I heard it was that the competion were bribeing the manual board operators to send his calls to other funeral homes.
... and the way I heard it was that the town operator was the wife of a competing undertaker who, when a caller asked to be put through to "an undertaker", would send a disproportionate fraction of the callers (and business) to her husband.
But here's a (possibly more interesting) followup question: what made him think that it would catch on? After all, he designed it to suit his needs, not the needs of the customer at large. Why would people want to look up an undertaker's number and ail it themselves when they can just ask to be put through to one?
How much of the way people used telephones have changed as a result? Did people have telephone numbers 120 years ago, or did you ask the operator to put you through to Hiram's Blacksmith on River Road? If there were telephone numbers, were there telephone directories, or did you call the operator to find out the number (which would seem to make noting the number redundant, since you had to call the operator to complete the call anyway)?
It would seem that automated switching changed many aspects of how we use the telephone ever since, but also some of these changes were required for automated switching to become viable. How big a risk did Strowger - and the companies that bought automated switching equipment - take when they concluded that people would accept it and it would work well?
One of the difficult questions the Bell System wrestled with was how the public would accept dialing over manual switchboards and the resistance (not 'if' but 'how much'). People saw themselves doing what used to be the work of the phone company and the phone company knew that.
In big cities, there was no option: they simply could not hire enough girls to be operators at a wage they could afford. Big city traffic was so high they needed thousands of operators. Turnover was large as the girls left to get married. [I don't think there was any consideration to go back to boys who were too boisterous and wild; I'm not sure if married young women were permitted to stay on, not socially acceptable in those days.]
But in many small towns, the operator(s) were like Sarah in Mayberry. They doubled as an answering service, pager for the town doctor and police, coordinated emergency actions, etc. Even if a town was big enough to require numbers, there was still very much a personal intiimate level of service. [Our small town operator, who transferred to a city when we went dial, told me the city board was a world difference, very strict, very uniform procedures.]
In the early cutover days Bell would actually send out trained reps house to house to explain how to use the new dial telephone. (They might also quietly pitch the benefits of an extension phone or upgrade in service class and did make some sales that way.)
When the DC Capitol went dial around 1930, many Senators were angry and felt the company was making them do the company's work. Complaints made the NY Times.
The flip side is that many customers felt dial was more private and faster. Many also thought it was more modern. So, many customers welcomed going to dial.
In big cities the operators did nothing but connect the call; if the line was busy they plugged in a busy signal. Going to dial meant no change in service.
In small towns, more services were provided.
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