Tag: inventions

Boomers Tossed the Party Line

In telephone parlance, a party line was one phone line shared by multiple households. According to Bell Telephone history, the practice of sharing a line started in the late 19th century. At that point, the telephone was not yet in every home, and a party line was an economical way to introduce new users to phone service. It became the predominant package for home use. Into the early 20th century, the telephone was thought of primarily as a tool for emergencies and the spread of pertinent family information (which usually meant bad news). Consequently, each phone call lasted no more than a few minutes.

As early as 1899, Ma Bell sought to make the party line undesirable so people would opt for the more expensive single, or “private,” line. Bell would place up to 20 houses on a single line to purposely complicate a consumer’s use of the phone. By the 1920s, people were moving off the party line, but the Depression put a crimp in Bell’s big picture. By the time the country’s economy was recovering, World War II came along. Many people, whether through tradition, inertia or family economics, kept their party line — much to the chagrin of Bell Telephone.

After the war and into the early boomer years, the use of the phone grew from an emergency tool to one of increasing social communication. Women were required to return to their homes after “manning” the factories while the men were at war, and now, at home and having babies, they used the phone to “reach out and touch” family and friends (as the telephone commercials used to say). When phone call times increased in duration, the frustration factor grew for party line users. It would seem that no matter when you wanted to use the phone, another person on the party line had beat you to it. Some neighbors used the direct link as an opportunity to eavesdrop on another neighbor’s conversation, while others were flummoxed by its inconvenience.

The 1959 Rock Hudson/Doris Day movie, Pillow Talk, portrayed scenes of a one-on-one confrontation between neighbors in New York City who were sharing a party line. Of course, the party line in the movie was used as a plot vehicle to get the two characters together. In real life, party lines in New York had all but disappeared after 1930.

The Rock Hudson character in Pillow Talk was a real ladies’ man, while Doris Day’s character was more of a homebody, career woman.

In the Midwest of Mister Boomer’s youth, party lines comprised about half of all telephone lines until the mid-60s. Mister B’s family had a party line connected to at least three or four other households. Often times, merely picking up the phone meant you were in the middle of someone else’s conversation. By picking up your receiver, a click could be heard by the actively speaking parties. That would prompt a terse, “We’re on the phone!” comment that would require you to instantly hang up for the sake of phone etiquette.

Mister B’s mother was constantly exasperated by the perpetual chatter on the phone every time she wanted to make a call. He recalls his mother yelling into the phone, “You’ve been on the phone over fifteen minutes! Give someone else a chance!” or, in periods of extreme frustration, “This is an emergency! Will you please get off the phone!”

Around 1962, she had had enough, and petitioned Mister B’s father to get a private line. That time period coincided with Bell moving people away from the two-letter phone number prefix to one of all numbers. Mister B’s house received their private line and new phone number that enabled direct dialing to and from anywhere in the world, though they kept the dial and didn’t upgrade to a push-button model. Phone numbers then consisted of a three-digit area code and three-digit exchange, followed by an addition four-digit personal number (see Boomers Dialed Up Some History).

As the Bell System introduced push-button phones around 1963, touch-tone dialing was replacing the older pulse dialing of a rotary dial phone. This technology conveniently required a private line, so it became another way Bell could move people off the party line and into a higher monthly payment bracket. Most households had dropped the party line option by the 1970s.

Do you have family memories of a party line, boomers?

Please note: This is an updated version of a post first published by Mister Boomer on July 31, 2011.

Boomer Families Said: Don’t Toss It, Fix It

As the nineteenth century eased into the twentieth, America was in a manufacturing boom that began to create a consumer class. With new manufacturing methods came consumer-level products for the home. Among these products were floor sweepers, sewing machines and washing machines. Each delivered a marked improvement over the labor required previously, yet they were still human-powered.

By the 1910s, electric motors were being manufactured and put to work powering new appliances, as well as replacing older ways of performing the same tasks in existing products. Now the Edwardian-era floor sweeper became the electric vacuum cleaner; an electric motor replaced the foot pedal on the sewing machine; and an electrical cord removed the need for heating an iron in a fire or loading it with hot coals before each use. New appliances that joined the consumer field included toaster ovens, toasters and refrigerators. Electricity was available in most urban locations as the 1920s arrived. The concerns about safety in the household from earlier decades were replaced with electricity’s promise of less drudgery. However, the relatively high cost of these new appliances restricted their widespread use; then, to make matters worse, the Great Depression took hold. Any boomer can tell you by way of The Three Stooges and The Little Rascals reruns that not everyone had electric refrigerators and appliances in the 1920s and 30s.

Entering the late 1930s, western countries were only beginning to pull out of the throes of the Depression when World War II came knocking at their door. Naturally, this put a significant crimp in consumer purchasing power as rationing and sacrifice were the order of the day and manufacturing factories were converted to wartime production.

Therefore, the first chance for companies to fully enjoy the fruits of the Industrial Revolution was during the post-War boomer years. As soon as the war ended, companies took full advantage of the growing number of parents who willingly partnered with them to lay the foundations for the consumer-driven market of today. The American Dream was alive and well, and along with the perfect home came labor-saving electrical appliances.

Improving on older product designs and inventing new ones, manufacturers created dozens of appliances for home use. The advance of television, interrupted by the War, now moved into full gear as the Golden Age of Broadcasting was ushered in. New, modern home units would be necessary to receive the signals transmitted through the airwaves, and view the marvels that were the TV shows of boomer youth.

Even though all the ducks seemed to be in a row for manufacturers, a funny thing happened along the way. The new consumer class expected quality products that lasted. If and when an appliance broke down, a new category of workers was created to repair it rather than replace it. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense that boomer parents, having lived through tough financial times the entire first half of their lives, first with the Great Depression then with the War, would be frugal with their earnings as they became new parents themselves. Consequently, they didn’t rush out to buy the latest and greatest items as soon as they arrived. Instead, they did what their parents had done in their own families — fix whatever was broken themselves or have it repaired. The result was boomers walking around with darned socks and patched jeans (though now of the iron-on variety), radio and TV tubes were replaced as needed and the toaster oven and hand mixer were taken into a repair shop for diagnosis and restoration.

More than likely, every boomer has a memory of going to a small appliance repair shop. They were busy places, usually of the storefront variety, with contraptions and parts scattered about and stacked to the ceiling on old wooden shelves. They were always run by men, and it always seemed that the repair would take a week — no matter what the problem.

Mister Boomer recalls trips to the repair shop via both the family car and walking the distance, with whatever the appliance was sitting in a little red wagon he and his siblings dutifully pulled along. The shop seemed dark and dingy, and the man was dirty and not very friendly. Yet a magical alchemy was evidently performed there weekly as appliances were returned, “good as new,” and with a 30-day warranty to boot.

As the 1960s edged toward the 70s, manufacturers were building planned obsolescence into their products even as the prices were coming down, so consumers could — and would have to — replace them more often. Manufacturers got an assist from boomer moms as they headed back to the workforce in heretofore unseen numbers, leaving less time for household chores. By the end of the 70s, the Disposable Era had begun in earnest and the steady decline of small appliance repair shops soon followed.

Do children today understand the history of why they now throw things away and buy new rather than repair the old? Perhaps it’s a lesson whose time has come. What do you think, boomers?

Please note: This post is an edited version first published by Mister Boomer on February 20, 2011.