This Day in Telephonic History
Did you know August 20 is an historical date in the wild and wacky world of telephony?
NO? Well, allow me to elucidate.
Let me to introduce you to (or reacquaint you with, as the case may be) Almon Brown Strowger. It was good ol' Almon who concluded way back in the late 19th century that a telephone caller should have the ability to reach the intended recipient of his/her call directly rather than having to go through a switchboard operator. Thus he set to work on the invention of the rotary-dialed telephone. It was on this date, August 20, in 1896, that employees of Almon, namely A.E. Keith and the brothers John and Charles Erickson, submitted an application for a patent on Almon's dialer. Patent Number 597,062 was granted on January 11, 1898.
I suppose I should just come right out and say that YES, I am so old that I have actually dialed a rotary phone. In fact, as a kid I had a Snoopy and Woodstock rotary telephone! (When you wanted to hang up the receiver, you’d just place it in Snoopy’s cute little paw.)
I can remember misdialing the last of the seven required numbers and frustratedly having to hang up and begin the slow-turning rotary dialing all over again. Who had the time to wait through all those "click-click-click-click-clicks? And for a second time? Ugh!
And then, before cordless phones, there was the excitement of trying to walk across the room holding the phone and being jerked back because the cord wasn’t long enough. Ugh, again!
Of course, prank calling strangers before the days of caller ID was always a giggle riot: “Hi, is your refrigerator running? Well, you better go catch it!” We were a laugh a minute, I tell ya.
Ah, the good old days. Thanks, Almon, for your brilliant invention. Even though dialing technology has evolved through rotaries to push buttons to touch pads, we'll never forget you. If we ever knew you, that is.
So, should you find yourself looking to upgrade your old rotary (or any) style system, give ATEL a call.