|
UNITED STATES EARLY RADIO HISTORY
THOMAS H. WHITE | |
| s e c t i o n
3 |
News and Entertainment by Telephone (1876-1925)
|
|
While the telegraph was mainly limited to transmitting Morse Code and printed messages, the invention of the telephone made distant audio communication possible. And although the telephone was mostly used for private conversations, there was also experimentation with providing home entertainment. In 1893 a particularly sophisticated system, the Telefon Hirmondó, began operation in Budapest, Hungary -- one of its off-shoots, the United States Telephone Herald Company and its affiliates, did not meet with the same financial success. ELECTRIC TELEPHONE In 1946, William Peck Banning wrote that "historians of the future may conclude that if there was any 'father' of broadcasting, perhaps it was the telephone itself". After the invention of the telegraph, numerous inventors worked to transmit audio along wires, initially with limited success. The first to finally achieve quality sound reproduction was Alexander Graham Bell -- Bell's Articulating Telephone from the 1876 edition of the annual Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers introduced the invention to British readers. (This review noted that "one cannot but be struck at the extreme simplicity" of Bell's invention, and eventually home telephones became easy enough to use so that a four-year-old could operate one, as reported in "Children Cry For It" from the March, 1908 Telephony.) The development of the telephone in the 1870s and 1880s included adapting it to distribute entertainment and news. In the January, 1908 issue of Telephony, C. E. McCluer reviewed some of his early experiences, including hearing experimental musical concerts in 1876, which were transmitted along commercial telegraph lines for the entertainment of the operators on the wire, as recounted in Telephonic Reminiscences. In the March 22, 1876 issue of New York Times, a review of The Telephone highlighted its potential for widely distributing entertainment, noting that "By means of this remarkable instrument, a man can have the Italian opera, the Federal Congress, and his favorite preacher laid on his own house." At the 1881 Paris International Electrical Exhibition, Clément Ader demonstrated the transmission of music from local theaters using telephone lines. Ader's use of dual lines also introduced the phenomenon of stereo listening -- at the time referred to as "binauriclar auduition" -- reviewed by The Telephone at the Paris Opera, which appeared in the December 31, 1881 issue of Scientific American. Edward Bellamy's influential 1888 utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (home music extract), included a future where, via telephone lines, individual homes had access to music 24-hours a day. A couple years later, an American Telephone and Telegraph Company executive, in Extension and Improvement of Telephone Service from the September 20, 1890 The Electrical World, reviewed efforts to establish a mealtime music service, noting that while there were problems with the sound quality, they were hopeful that "When we have overcome this difficulty we shall be prepared to furnish music on tap." (While most were intrigued by this possibility, not everyone was favorably impressed, and in the same issue of the magazine a reviewer warned of the potential intrusiveness of the idea, fearing "a vista of dreadful possibilities" that might "make incipient deafness bliss", in Music on Tap.) In the October 9, 1890 The New York Times, Music Over the Wires also reviewed AT&T's development plans, with hopes that ultimately "the lines used in the daytime for business affairs will at night carry music, lectures, and various oral entertainments to all the cities of the East". Arthur Mee, in the September, 1898 The Strand Magazine, suggested in The Pleasure Telephone that a telephonic entertainment system, operating throughout Great Britain, had the potential to "make millions merry who have never been merry before" and would revolutionize British society, to "make all classes kin". In 1902 Theodor Herzl published a utopian novel, Oldnewland, about a planned city twenty years in the future. In extract appearing in the January, 1903 issue of The Maccabæan, the characters talk about the city's advertising supported "telephonic journal", with its commercial announcements "often made in so humorous a form that you do not recognize that they are advertisements until the end". In the May, 1904 issue of Telephone Magazine, Dr. Alfred Gradenwitz wrote about a proposal by Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen in The Use of the Telegraphone in Telephony, who suggested that "a special application" of his recently invented magnetic wire-recorder would be to continuously repeat news and music transmissions as part of a "telephone newspaper" setup. In spite of the varied attempts to set up telephone-based news and entertainment services, none achieved long-term success in the United States. The major problem was weak signals, for until the mid-1910s there were only very limited means for quality amplification. In the May, 1916 The Electrical Experimenter, Hugo Gernsback's What to Invent--Tele-music predicted that "An 'industry' rivaling the moving picture business can be created when some genius perfects a means supplying telephone subscribers with all kinds of music". Actually, at the time this article appeared, most of the needed technical advances were already in place, for AT&T engineers, lead by Dr. Harold Arnold, had recently taken Lee DeForest's crude Audion amplifier and perfected it into a much more effective device, making possible more sensitive microphones, quality line amplification, and better loudspeakers, that finally made the establishment of home entertainment distributed by telephone-lines practical. In view of these advances, in the April, 1919 Electrical Experimenter Gernsback returned to the topic of entertainment by telephone distribution, predicting in Grand Opera in Your Home that individuals would now welcome "spending 50 cents or even a dollar for the privilege, and at that he would think he was getting it cheap because he, with his entire family, would hear the music in his own home without having to travel to and from the opera". But, ironically, the same vacuum-tube advances that made telephone-based services practical also doomed them, because an additional development, vacuum-tube radio transmitters, also made radio broadcasting practical, with the added benefit that programs could be more widely distributed at minimal cost. Meanwhile, Well Clay, blissfully ignorant of the radio broadcasting boom already beginning to gain momentum, mused in the July 9, 1921 edition of his weekly Telephony column, Sundry Snapshots Along the Trail, about the possibility of using telephone lines to distribute concerts to regional audiences. Even more exuberant was AT&T engineer R. W. King, interviewed in the December 11, 1921 The New York Times, who, after reviewing the nationwide telephonic links that were now possible, was moved to Predict Audiences of 50,000,000 Soon for telephonic distribution, although most of the audience would be located in scattered auditoriums. The February, 1922 Science and Invention covered the same topic in If President Harding Spoke to 120,000,000 People, noting and illustrating the fact that President Harding would have to grow to a monstrous height of 173 feet (53 meters) if he wanted to personally address this massive audience, instead of using the more practical system of vacuum tube amplifiers and telephone lines. However, in the end, instead of auditoriums, the long-distance telephone lines would actually be used to link radio stations together, to form national networks that allowed citizens to listen to the distant speeches in the comfort of their own homes. PARIS THEATROPHONE Although most of these early entertainment and news efforts were experimental or one-time-only events, a few on-going services were established, mostly in Europe. The first permanent telephone-based entertainment service, which grew out of Clément Ader's earlier work, appears to have been the Theatrophone, organized in Paris in 1890. A short note in the August 30, 1889 The Electrical Engineer, Theatrophone, reported on plans to build the system for Parisians and make it attractive enough to "catch their ears and their centimes". The Theatrephone in the June 21, 1890 Electrical Review briefly noted that the new service was now close to being put into operation, and a first-hand account of the innovation appeared in the August 29, 1891 issue of the same magazine, reporting that The Theatrophone in Paris was "certainly more amusing than the weighing machines and pull-testers that so overcrowd our waiting-rooms everywhere". A more detailed review of The Theatrophone appeared in the May 29, 1891 Times of London, whose "Our Own Correspondent" was both favorably impressed by the new service and moved to predict that the "theatrophonic network" would soon move beyond mere entertainment to offerings that "will be more and more numerous, complicated, and astonishing". The Theatrophone section of Charles Henry Cochrane's 1896 book The Wonders of Modern Mechanism reviewed the system's organization, which allowed individual subscribers to choose which theater programs they wished to listen to. BUDAPEST TELEFON HIRMONDÓ Although not the first, the most influential telephone-based service would be the Telefon Hirmondó, set up by inventor Tivadar Puskás in Budapest, Hungary, which began operation on February 15, 1893, just a month before Puskás died at the age of 49. An obituary for Puskás appeared in the March 24, 1893 issue of The Electrical Review -- in the April 7th issue of the same magazine, A Telephonic Journal reviewed a test transmission that had linked the system to listeners in Vienna, Graz, Trieste, Prague and Brünn, with Puskás claiming that the potential existed for "half a million subscribers spread all over Europe". Meanwhile, a short notice in the May 12, 1893 The Electrical Engineer noted that the inventor had hoped to one day "arrange a telephone system to be heard by millions of speakers at once", however, "the secret of which probably died with him". Two early reviews of Puskás' innovation appeared in The Electrical World: Telephonic News Distribution in the March 18, 1893 issue, followed by Telephone Newspaper on November 4, 1893. Two years later, a detailed review of the production of A "Newspaper" Without Paper, reprinted from the Daily Chronicle, ran in the September 27, 1895 The World's Paper Trade Review, with the author noting that the service, featuring continuous news reports, plus entertainment, including original fiction sometimes read by the authors themselves, was considered "almost indispensable" in the capital. However, not everyone was impressed. In an early attack on the electronic media by the written press, the September 28, 1895 issue of Harper's Weekly opined that "If all this really happens at Pesth, and not in the moon" then "Pesth must be the finest place for illiterate, blind, bedridden and incurably lazy people in the world" and "it would not appear, however, that a telephone newspaper is of value as a time-saving device". Also, on the first day of 1899, the Atlanta Constitution reprinted a short first-hand account from the New Orleans Times-Democrat about the Telephone Newspaper of Budapest, which concluded that although "The thing was certainly great fun until the novelty wore off", many of the local residents regarded the service as "a toy to amuse foreigners". (In its October 23, 1907 issue, the London humor weekly Punch, in Warning to Fleet Street, speculated about the name changes that the British press would have to undergo -- for example, the Daily Mail would become the Daily Wail -- should papers be forced to convert into audio services.) Most reviews of the service, however, were favorable. Thomas S. Denison's The Telephone Newspaper, from the April, 1901 edition of World's Work, reported in detail on a personal visit to the Telefon Hirmondó's offices. Frederick A. Talbot's article about Budapest's "newspaper of the future", A Telephone Newspaper, appeared in the July 4, 1903 issue of Chambers's Journal, and in 1908 W. B. Forster Bovill wrote about a first-hand encounter with the service in a hotel in Hungary and the Hungarians: Telephon Hirmondo extract. Over the years, the existence of the Telefon Hirmondó was constantly being rediscovered. Why I Believe in Government Radio--Hungary's "Telephone Newspaper", from the October, 1922, Popular Science Monthly reviewed Robert B. Howell's impressions of the now 28-year-old service. In 1925, the system added a radio station and operated as the Magyar Telefon Hirmondó és Rádió, with the telephone relay available for subscribers until 1944. LONDON ELECTROPHONE In 1895, another telephone-based system, the Electrophone, was established in London, England, organized along the lines of the Paris Theatrophone. An early trial of The Theatrophone in London entertained listeners at the Savoy Hotel, and featured coin-operated receivers where "inadequate coins were contemptuously thrown out through a hole at the side", as reported in the December 9, 1891 Times of London. An announcement of the pending introduction of The Electrophone appeared in the September 3, 1893 San Francisco Call, and after the service went into regular operation, test transmissions were soon performed across the English Channel, as a London Truth notice, Paris by Telephone, reprinted in the June 21, 1896 Washington Post, reported that operas performed in the French capital had entertained an audience in its British counterpart. A technical overview of The Electrophone, by J. Wright, appeared in the September 10, 1897 The Electrical Engineer, which noted that "one can sit comfortably at home in all weathers and listen to the latest comedy, opera, or tragedy, as the case may be, by the payment of a purely nominal rental". The August 28, 1898 San Francisco Call reviewed Britain's Prince of Wales' use of the Electrophone in Music, Singing and Dialogues Brought Direct to Your Bedside by Wire, and the service soon claimed his mother, Queen Victoria, as a listener, according to The Queen and the Electrophone, from the May 26, 1899 The Electrician. (Henry Thompson, in the Telephone London section of the 1903 edition of London Living, reported that the Electrophone had been used to transmit a special performace for the monarch, conducted by 2,000 school children to "cheer her and sing 'God Save the Queen' on her last birthday".) In the October 5, 1901 Electrical Review, Electrophone in England reported that "the popularity of the electrophone is increasing", with a decrease of the subscription charge from $50 to $12 per year. The August 5, 1898 The Electrical World reported that the company was in the process of installing receivers at "the principal hospitals free of charge, beyond the cost of installation". And two decades later, the same free service was provided to some jolly chaps photographed recuperating in a London hospital, as reported in British Wounded Hear London's Favorites via Telephone, which appeared in the August, 1917 The Electrical Experimenter. (A. P. Herbert was less than enthusiastic about the service when he was hospitalized -- "It was horrible", according to his Modern Nuisances, from the August 7, 1920 Living Age.) In early 1923, there were reportedly around 2,000 Electrophone subscribers in the London area, and Entertainment by Wireless: The Future of the Electrophone from the January 10, 1923 London Times speculated about the effect the introduction of organized radio broadcasting would have on the service. (The British Broadcasting Company had been formed in 1922, and listeners had to pay an annual licence fee to own a radio receiver). Although a company director was reported to be optimistic, in truth the service was doomed, and a notice in the June 17, 1925 Times reported that the Postmaster-General had withdrawn the company's licence, and the thirty-year run of the Electrophone, Ltd. would cease at the end of the month. Not that it would be unmissed -- years later a nostalgic review in the May 9, 1957 London Times, Theatre-Going By Telephone, remembered that "There was something very satisfying about listening to a live broadcast from a real theatre, by actors and actresses playing to and having contact with their own audiences" which radio and television broadcasting could not match. And in the mid-1920s a new service arose in numerous British towns, "wireless relay exchanges", where subscribers could listen to radio broadcasts, received at a central location, over telephone lines, avoiding the need to purchase an expensive radio receiver. U.S. DEVELOPMENTS When the Telefon Hirmondó was reviewed by W. G. Fitz-Gerald in A Telephone Newspaper in the June 22, 1907 Scientific American, its editor noted that the service had been in operation for 14 years, and "I have often marveled why a country like America with its amazing enterprise and development has not produced a 'Telefon-Hirmondo' of its own". However, telephone-based news and entertainment services did not prove economically viable in the United States. In the July 5, 1890 Electrical Review, Wanted, a Theatrophone had suggested adopting the Paris system in the U.S., including its five-minute news reports, predicting that "We should imagine that a similar venture would meet with great success in New York, especially with the addition of the news message service, as the craving of Americans for 'news' is known to be insatiable." However, George Iles noted the absence of audio services in the U.S. in his 1904 book, "Flame, Electricity and the Camera", and suggested this was due to the impossibility of making a permanent record, thus "This is why the ticker, which prints the news in thousands of American offices and clubs, has never been ousted by the Budapest plan of a continuous news service by telephone." TELLEVENT James F. Land of the Michigan State Telephone Company was responsible for the development of a short-lived telephone-based entertainment system, which was variously known as the "Tellevent" and the "Televant". A test of Speech Reporting by Televant was reported in the April, 1906 Telephony, followed by a short announcement in the March 23, 1907 issue of Electrical Review about the formation of a Detroit company, The "Tellevent", to "supply subscribers at their homes with the latest happenings of the world, with special music, performances at theatres, concerts and churches". There was at least one demonstration transmission, originating from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, as the May 11, 1907 issue of the school's The Michigan Daily reported Detroit Enabled to Hear May Festival Concerts. However, the Tellevent does not appear to have gone into commerical service, and the Michigan Tellevent Company was dissolved in 1909. TELEPHONE HERALD COMPANIES The most ambitious U.S. effort to establish a telephone-based news and entertainment service was organized by Manley M. Gillam, who formed the United States Telephone Herald Company, based in New York City, with plans to set up local affiliated Telephone Herald news and entertainment services, patterned after the Budapest Telefon Hirmondó, throughout the country. A short announcement in the October 30, 1909 Electrical Review and Western Electrician, The New Telephone Newspaper, teased that "pretty soon we'll be able to flop over in bed mornings, turn on a telephone-like arrangement and listen to a summary of news from all over the world without getting up out of bed". On February 14, 1911, U.S. Patent #984,235, describing "a telephone system... adapted for supplying innumerable subscribers... general news, musical compositions, and operas, sermons, correct or standard time and other happenings at stated intervals of day and night" was granted to Hungarian Árpád Németh and assigned to the United States Telephone Herald Company. The June 15, 1910 Meriden Morning Record reported that an enthusiastic company representative, Ladislaus de Doory, was promoting the proposed establishment of a Newspaper by 'Phone For Chicago, proclaiming that "within a year everybody in Chicago, from hod carriers to millionaires, will have the Telephone Herald in the house". In the September 9, 1910 New York Times, News Bulletins By 'Phone reviewed a demonstration of the proposed service at the company's New York City headquarters, given by company president Gillam. Early the next year Ladislaus de Doory was back in the news, heading north of the border to Canada, with the announcement that "the Telephone Herald company may soon establish a plant in Montreal", according to News and Opera over Telephone, from the January 12, 1911 Montreal Gazette. (Two months later, in a plot that would have made a good telenovela story line, the front page of the March 8, 1911 Pittsburgh Press reported that Doory's 16-year-old Girl Bride Now Wants to Leave "Baron", as his young wife was asking for an annulment while her parents were threatening to have him arrested for desertion; meanwhile a second woman was contemplating a "breach of promise suit", plus federal authorities were reportedly investigating the Telephone Herald company.) Despite the various promotions, the only affiliated system known to have gone into commercial operation was the New Jersey Telephone Herald Company, which was organized by Gillam and based in Newark, New Jersey. This company had some difficulty procuring leased telephone lines, with the dispute eventually resolved by the Public Utilities Commission of New Jersey, resulting in an announcement in the September 15, 1911 Lewiston Journal that News by Telephone was expected to become available by the first of the next month. The actual debut date turned out to be October 24, 1911, and the following day's New York Times reviewed the inauguration in 500 Get the News by Wire at Once. Arthur F. Colton's The Telephone Newspaper--New Experiment in America, from the March 30, 1912 issue of Telephony, provided a detailed overview of the new service. Seeking subscribers, in the 1912 edition of The Resources for Social Service of Newark, New Jersey the owners of the New Jersey company ran an advertisement suggesting that "The Twentieth Century Newspaper" service "ought to be in every institution" and that some far-seeing philanthropist might want to pay for the service to entertain charity patients. This ad also noted that the Herald "ought to be in your home for yourself and your children", and during that year the family of Roger Garis, then a schoolboy, subscribed to the Newark Telephone Herald service -- he later remembered the "great thrill to pick up the small receiver and hear a voice telling about world events" which "was such a novelty that I could scarcely wait to get home from school and listen to it". Roger Garis' father, Howard Garis, was a writer, and one day Roger Garis was startled and excited to hear one of his father's "Uncle Wiggily" stories being read over the Telephone Herald -- the events are recounted in an extract from My Father was Uncle Wiggily. The elder Garis went on to write a series of original children's stories for reading over the system, forty of which were later collected into two books published in 1912, beginning with Three Little Trippertrots--Adventure Number One. Richard D. Arons, one of the original "stentors" (announcers), reminisced about the experience in the February 12, 1928 Springfield (Massachusetts) Sunday Union and Republican. However, although popular with its subscribers, the Newark system was not a financial success, with its death announced and short life reviewed in Phone Newspaper Service from the April 13, 1912 The Publisher's Weekly, and Broadcasting in 1912, written by G. C. B. Rowe, which appeared in the June, 1925 issue of Radio News. In the November 28, 1918 edition of the New York Tribune, Harry Weiss asked the paper's The Ad-Visor column about the value, if any, of his United States Telephone Herald Company stock. It was their sad duty, as part of the job of "separating the sheep of advertising... from the goats", to inform Mr. Weiss that the defunct Telephone Herald fell into the "goat" category, and "in our opinion, the stock at this time is of no value". During this time additional affiliated Telephone Herald companies were established throughout the United States, although it is not certain whether any survived long enough to inaugurate full commercial operations. News is Told Through 'Phone, from the August 24, 1911 Los Angeles Times, reported that "Los Angeles is to be the first city in the United States to boast a 'telefon hirmondo' (the New Jersey system had not begun operation yet) as "W. A. Grimes" of the recently incorporated Southern California Telephone Herald Company claimed that demonstrations of the system would begin shortly. This was followed by an Advertisement for the Southern California Telephone Herald Company in the September 3, 1911 issue of the same newspaper, which informed local residents that "You Want The Telephone Herald", however, even if they did, there is no information that this system progressed past the promotional stage. Moreover, Grimes, whose full name was actually Peter Archbold Gordon Grimes, turned out to be a con man, who soon fled town with company funds -- his exploits and later brushes with the law were reviewed in "Kenneth Gordon, Aviator" Turns Out to Be Plain Peter Grimes, from the July 26, 1912 Hawaiian Gazette. In contrast, a year later a Telephone Herald affiliate in Portland, Oregon advanced at least to the point that it conducted demonstration transmissions. In the June 27, 1912 Oregon Daily Journal, an Advertisement for the Oregon Telephone Herald Company advised the public of the free daily demonstrations and solicited subscribers to the proposed service, which was "The Acme of Modern Civilization", costing five cents a day, and promising "Never a Dull Moment" for a service "Always on Tap!". A second Advertisement for the Oregon Telephone Herald Company, in the June 30, 1912 Oregon Sunday Journal, stated that regular service would begin on "about October 1st". An advertisement soliciting subscribers for The Talking Newspaper and Amusement Purveyor appeared in a January, 1913 edition of the Portland Orpheum, and in the January 7, 1913 Los Angeles Times, an Oregon Telephone Herald official claimed in a Personals entry that "more than 10,000 Portland residents have installed the service". An additional Oregon Telephone Herald advertisement, promoting sites where one could listen to election results for free, appeared in the May 13, 1913 Portland Oregonian, however, it is not clear to what extent, or for how long, the Portland system provided a commercial service. MUSOLAPHONE Stanley R. Edwards' review of the Musolaphone loud-speaking telephone, in the October 11, 1913 Telephony, noted it was being employed by the Illinois Telephone and Telegraph Company for Increasing the Revenue Producing Efficiency of a Plant, by providing three separate program services -- first-hand music, recorded music, and general information -- to home subscribers in Chicago. There were a couple of references to entertainment being provide by Musolaphone to audiences at the Chicago Coliseum during the next month, but the innovation appears to have gone silent shortly thereafter. (An earlier review of the Musolaphone, Loud-Speaking Telephone Enunciators in Baseball Grand Stand in the August 2, 1913 Electrical World, found that when used for public address purposes the audio quality was adequate for spoken announcements, but for musical reproduction it was somewhat wanting.) TELECTROPHONE The February 21, 1914 Music Trade Review included a short notice about demonstration transmissions by the Pennsylvania Telectrophone Company at the Gimbel Brothers department store in Philadelphia, to Introduce Telectrophone, a service that "gives a concert, flashes news bulletins, recites menus for the benefit of the housewife, and during the afternoon rattles off current market reports and sporting events". This review stated that the innovation "excites considerable interest and general favor", however, the company soon ran into financial troubles, and Levy on Telectrophone Company, $1,500,000 Concern from the July 14, 1915 Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger reported difficulties paying bills, although the company was "attempting to raise more capital". (A Telectrophone Company of Southern California was incorporated in July, 1914, however, this service may not have even progressed to the demonstration stage). TEL-MUSICI AND MAGNAPHONE George E. Webb was associated with a variety of innovative entertainment-by-telephone projects. The January 26, 1908 Baltimore Sun reviewed his demonstration of a proposed Melody By 'Phone service -- capable of providing "'10 cents' worth of Lohengrin,' or 'a quarter's worth of ragtime,'" -- to a group of businessmen in Baltimore, Maryland. This was eventually developed into the Tel-musici of Wilmington, Delaware, a pay-per-play phonograph service, where, as reported in Distributing Music Over Telephone Lines from the December 18, 1909 Telephony and Phonograph Selections by Telephone from the April, 1910 Popular Mechanics, home and commercial subscribers called a central office to request tunes played back over their phone lines. Webb went on to develop an improved loudspeaker called the Magnaphone, which he envisioned would be used for a wide variety of applications. A review in the September, 1912 The Edison Monthly, Opera by Wire, announced that a franchise for a recorded music service had been granted in New York city to the New York Magnaphone and Music Company, and a review of the proposed new service, Music and News on Tap as Bellamy Foretold Long Ago, from the September 15, 1912 New York Times, asked "Does it strike you as desirable to have the world brought to your ear, with no more effort on your part than the turning of a switch and the drawing up of a comfortable chair?" Edward Lyell Fox's Bring the "Talkies" to Your Home, from the August, 1913 Technical World Magazine, enumerated a range of potential applications, from basic public address systems for train stations and baseball stadiums, to a multi-channel sound system for movie theaters, and even as a remote speaker for audio sent over telephone lines from a central location for movies viewed at home. Makes Pictures Talk, from the April 2, 1913 Baltimore Sun, reviewed a New York demonstration of talking movies using the device, while a report of the Magnaphone in the January, 1913 The World's Work emphasized its use as The Talking Ticker, useful for telephone-distributed news and entertainment, declaring that "There is a talking ticker now, a machine that will entertain and instruct you for twelve hours on a stretch with the gist of the day's political speeches, baseball scores, election returns, and any other news that seems important." But this apparently was a case where the technology once again fell short of commercial success, as the January 22, 1913 New York Times' Public Notice--Magnaphone reported that the New York Magnaphone and Music Company was canceling a contract for running underground lines for its music and information service, and a 1915 Report by the New York Bureau of Franchises noted that "the New York Magnaphone and Music Company never commenced operations". OTHER DEVELOPMENTS While program services such as the Théâtrophone, Telefon Hirmondó, Telephone Herald, and Electrophone operated on daily schedules, on occasion the standard phone system was also used for distributing entertainment, news, and advertising. Scattered reports included:
MARKETING AND ADVERTISING BY TELEPHONE There were even some early reports of the telephone being used for direct marketing, for example, an article in the September 12, 1903 Western Electrician, Advertising by Telephone, reported that a Fairmont, Minnesota store found telephone soliciting much more effective than "sending clerks or errand boys" to inform potential clients about buying opportunities. Lynn Sumner, in Retailing by Wire from the March, 1909, System magazine, reviewed a department store's "general solicitation", made by telephone to over 1000 prospetive customers, promoting "a carnival of values... an offering of exceptional qualities at prices we have never before been able to make." Canvassing by Telephone, from the December 10, 1910 Electrical Review and Western Electrician, reported about an electric power company's practice of calling potential customers at home, noting that "Regarding time of calling it is suggested that between 8 and 9 is preferable, owing to the fact that the head of the house is generally in at that time and a sufficient length of time has elapsed after the evening meal." But, happy as the companies might be about this innovation, some of the targets of their calls were not as pleased, according to Housekeeper Objects to Telephone Advertising, from the February 20, 1909 Telephony, as one subscriber complained that, because of telephoned sales pitches, "My telephone is far more of a nuisance to me than it is a convenience." The telephone was also employed in the political sphere, used for "get out the vote" calls according to Telephone Help Election Day from the June, 1908 Telephony, which suggested that this approach should be adopted by "all up-to-date political managers who want to reach the people in the right way and at the right time". Recorded political speeches were also played for prospective voters, as noted by Campaign Speeches by Telephone from the October 3, 1908 Telephony. TELEPHONIC RADIO STATION RELAYS In the end, there would turn out to be few cases where the telephone would actually be used for direct distribution of programming, although it would play an important role in connecting radio studios to remote sites, and especially for interconnecting radio stations into national networks. Moreover, in later years, there were a few cases where telephones services were used to retransmit radio programs to subscribers. A prime example of this sort of hybrid system was developed in Fredonia, Kansas, reviewed by J. A. Gustafson in Kansas Company Uses Radio as a Developer of Revenue from the December 16, 1922 Telephony, and Radio Service Given Over the Telephone, by Thomas F. Gilliams, which appeared in the March, 1925 Radio News -- at the time of the latter article, the system was also being used to originate local programming, such as church services, avoiding the expense of having to build and operate a radio station. An article by Grayson L. Kirk in the May, 1923 Radio Broadcast reviewed a local telephone company's system in Dundee, Michigan, designed as an entertainment utility for Supplying Broadcasts Like Gas or Electricity. This review wondered "Who will say how many Dundees, all over the country, will be adopting this system of municipal radio within the next few years?", but the answer would be "not very many", at least in the United States, although scattered audio transmission systems would be continue to be used throughout Europe. (In Great Britain, beginning in the 1920s, hundreds of "Relay Exchange" systems were set up to provide local radio reception over telephone lines. These were required by law to only retransmit received radio programs, and were prohibited from producing their own programs or connecting to other sources such as local theaters). |
| "Those who have read Mr. Bellamy's story, 'Looking Backward,' will remember the concerts continually going on day and night, with telephone connections to every house, so that everyone can listen to the very best obtainable music at will. But few persons are aware that a somewhat similar use of the telephone is actually in operation at Buda-Pesth in the form of a telephonic newspaper. At certain fixed hours throughout the day a good reader is employed to send definite classes of news along the wires which are laid to subscribers' houses and offices, so each person is able to hear the particular items he desires, without the delay of its being printed and circulated in successive editions of a newspaper. It is stated that the news is supplied to subscribers in this way at little more than the cost of a daily newspaper, and that it is a complete success."--Herbert T. Wade, Young Folks Treasury: Wonders of Science and Invention, 1909. |