Telephone Technology: Push Buttons and Party Lines

Fishwrap / Newspapers.com ^ | November 4, 2019 | Jenny Ashcraft

[ProtectOurFreedom]

In the Spring of 1963, President John F. Kennedy sat down at his desk in the oval office. With cameras clicking, he picked up the handset of a telephone and pressed the numbers “1964”. The connection activated a countdown clock for the New York World’s Fair, set to open the following year. The photo opportunity was noteworthy, however, because Kennedy’s call showcased an amazing new technology – the push-button dial telephone.

Later that year, on November 18, 1963, Bell Telephone officially rolled out push-button telephones to the public. A push-button interface meant customers no longer had to wind a rotary dial and wait for it to spin back when dialing each number. This technological achievement was the latest in a long line of telephone innovation that dated back to when Alexander Graham Bell received the first patent for a telephone in 1876.

Back then, Alexander Graham Bell and his colleague Thomas Watson shocked the world when they carried on a 30-minute telephone conversation from two miles apart. ...it wasn’t feasible to stretch a wire between every set of telephones, so inventors developed a telephone exchange. Each telephone connected to the exchange by wire. To place a call, a caller would pick up the phone and turn a crank. This illuminated a light at the switchboard at the central station and an operator would plug a wire into your jack and ask who you needed to reach. She then connected a wire to the appropriate customer and sent an electrical current down the line to alert them with a bell.

[hanamizu]

The radio play, The Hitchhiker, starring Orson Wells in available on YouTube has a scene where Wells is making a call across country to NY that pretty much illustrates what you said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_vGz_Jbn54&t=31s&frags=pl%2Cwn

I remember my dad call his parents in Idaho from California sometimes telling the Operator what connections she had to make to complete the call. (I don’t know if they appreciated his help or not.)