JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 236
Yes, this elegant, well written (oversized) 1946 pamphlet, which explains
in fabulous and excruciating detail how to use the telephone, does
indeed come with a two-part heavy paper telephone receiver for the reader's practice. It is packaged in an envelope in the back of the
pamphlet with a large drawing explaining how to put the two pieces
together. The work is just so fulsome, wholesome, forthright,
exacting and thorough that it just makes the casual reader stop in
their tracks. For example, it isn't until page 13 that we get to pick
up the receiver (and listen for the dial tone). I've reproduced some of
the table of contents to give an idea of the extent of the telephone
usage.
What brings this so close to being from out of the science fiction past is that the booklet is ten years older than me. Atanasoff's ABC, Bell Labs Mark II, Bletchley's Colossus, and Harvard's Mark I machines existed, television was getting off the ground, and telephones were exploding their way into more American homes and businesses. But somehow, here on the verge of the greatest electrical revolution in history, we're still getting instructions on how to pick up the telephone. But I'm really not complaining here, not at all--its just the nexus of the "how to listen for a dial tone" and the coming of the ENIAC one year after this pamphlet is published that is so startling.
Even so, this instructional is more complete and (of course) better written
than any of the pc manuals that came with any of the machines that I've
purchase int the last 25 years. It is a thing of great and supra-obvious beauty.
Again, this is another example of a small job done Very Correctly.
(Click on image to expand.)
We seem to forget how the extraordinary becomes mundane. My 82-year-old mother remembers speaking, as two year old, into the telephone for the first time. She was held up to the mouthpiece and told to say 'hello'. She managed a shy whisper but nothing more.
Posted by: jasper | 04 September 2008 at 05:56 PM
We seem to forget how the extraordinary becomes mundane. My 82-year-old mother remembers speaking, as two year old, into the telephone for the first time. She was held up to the mouthpiece and told to say 'hello'. She managed a shy whisper but nothing more.
Posted by: jasper | 04 September 2008 at 05:56 PM
We seem to forget how the extraordinary becomes mundane. My 82-year-old mother remembers speaking, as two year old, into the telephone for the first time. She was held up to the mouthpiece and told to say 'hello'. She managed a shy whisper but nothing more.
Posted by: jasper | 04 September 2008 at 05:56 PM