Over the years, I’ve blogged a number of times about telephones. Recently, I’ve mentioned that we are way overdue to get new iPhones. Usually I look forward to the newest gadgets, but this time I’m not looking forward to new phones — they’ll basically work like our present phones, but some things will have changed and it’ll take some adjustment on my part to get comfortable with the new phone.
I guess that’s always been the case with new technology and telephones especially have gone through tremendous changes through the years.
At one point in time, you had to remember (or look-up) phone numbers. Today, all your contacts are stored in your phone and you rarely have to type in a new number.
The first telephone was installed in the U.S. Capitol building in 1880 — situated in the lobby of the House of Representatives. By the 1890s telephones became standard equipment in the Capitol. In those days, a Congressman just had to pick up the phone and he would be connected with an operator who would place the call for him.
This all worked well until 1930 when new-fangled manual-dial phones were installed in Congressional offices. This was just too much and in the spring of 1930, the Senate considered the following resolution:
“Whereas dial telephones are more difficult to operate than are manual telephones, and Whereas Senators are required, since the installation of dial phones in the Capitol, to perform the duties of telephone operators in order to enjoy the benefits of telephone service; and Whereas dial telephones have failed to expedite telephone service; Therefore be it resolved that the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate is authorized and directed to order the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. to replace with manual phones within 30 days after the adoption of this resolution, all dial telephones in the Senate wing of the United States Capitol and in the Senate office building.”
The resolution, sponsored by Virginia’s Carter Glass, passed without objection when first considered on May 22, 1930. Arizona’s Henry Ashurst praised the sponsor for his restrained language. The Congressional Record would not be mailable, he said, “If it contained in print what Senators think of the dial telephone system.”
One day before the scheduled removal of all dial phones, Maryland Senator Millard Tydings offered a resolution to give senators a choice because some of the younger senators actually preferred the dial phones. Finally, technology came to the rescue —although the telephone company had pressed for the installation of an all-dial system, it said it could provide the Senate with phones that worked both ways. Senator Glass, the original sponsor of the resolution spoke just before the the Senate agreed to the compromise plan, “Mr. President, so long as I am not pestered with the dial and may have the manual telephone, while those who want to be pestered with [the dial] may have it, all right.”
This just goes to show you what the world’s greatest deliberative body can accomplish when they set their minds to it.
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