I think you misunderstood what he meant. Not sure you know what telephone use required in 1926 either.
Long distance was a pain in the butt as late as the 80s. Now I don’t usually even notice when I call someone across the country.
On a TV show a Chinese student in America got upset about something so called his dad in China. No more involved than calling across the street. And nobody noticed how amazing such a thing is.
So, yeah, I’m pretty sure phones are much easier to use than in his day.
Yeah the changes were staggering. My dad was a 45 year Ma Bell employee. In 1948 when he hired on the rural communities still had magnetic crank phones and the customer used it to ring the switchboard operator. He spent his first several years changing out those to four or eight party lines.
The cites faired better with two party lines and businesses had single party. He saw the changeover from human switching to electromechanical switching offices and had to take about a year and half special training to maintain it. He went into what was called a 4A office which was the forerunner to Computerized Electronic Switching. 4A was a large room several thousand square feet per floor of bays and bays of relays of which each one had 50-100 contacts. 4A handled the long distance switching system. 4A's weere found in mid sized to large cities and acted as the long distance switching HUB for a region. The main multi state HUB in the south was in or very near Birmingham, Alabama I think for a long time. I remember that real well. When I was a kid he'd take me in to work with him sometimes. He also trained me to troubleshoot :>}
ESS the electronic switching system showed up in some places in the 1970's. Our rural phone exchange {owned at the time by Ma Bell before the split} was the first office in Tennessee to get it. By 1981 his office went to ESS. The equipment that had taken up two floors of a large five story building meaning the electromechanical switching system was replaced with two computers {one was a back up} that would fit in a typical living room. That was even before Cell Phones as we know them today were marketed. That forerunner was Mobile Phone and it was for people who had LOTS of money.
AT&T {The parent company of all Bells, Western Electric {the installers of the offices switching centers}, Bell Labs {the research part}, etc for decades also handled all national TV Networking. It was done via microwave tower grid and then later communication satellites when they were developed. Most people never knew that part. To show a live show say from NYC it was networked to the locals TV stations by Ma Bell's system. I got to see that equipment also.
When 4A went ESS my dad didn't want to learn computers. Had he stayed with that part he would have lost his job by being forced to retire at about his 35th yr of service. Instead he went outside. That was also the time frame the split was done. AT&T got the ESS and South Central Bell as it was called then got the local exchanges. He wisely chose South Central Bell and went back outside and ironically was maintaining data circuits till his retirement in 1993 LOL. Lots of changes happened even in his time with Bell. His old office equipment was dismantled, crated up, and shipped to the Middle East.
What did he mean?