The radio craze will die out in no time.
Thomas Edison, 1922. Quoted in The Sunday Times, 12 December 1999.
Sign from the RMS Olympic, 1923:
This vessel is fitted with special long range wireless apparatus which will enable passengers to communicate with their friends or business houses on shore throughout the voyage across the North Atlantic Ocean. The wireless rate for messages directed through the long distance wireless stations at Devizes, England, Chatham, Mass. and Louisburg, N.S., is 10d per word, land telegraph or cable charges additional. The ship is constantly in touch with one or other of these stations.
There is more sorrow over one trunk call that is lost than rejoicing over the ninety and nine that are entirely successful.
from The Operator and the Trunk Call by R.S.Grosvenor, The Telegraph and Telephone Journal, July 1930. Reproduced in Telecommunications Heritage Journal, Winter 2007.
How to Use the Telephone
TO CALL EXCHANGE-Place receiver to ear and listen.
TO ANSWER-Lift receiver and announce name of subscriber.
TO RECALL EXCHANGE-Move receiver rest slowly down and up until an
answer is received.
Do not replace receiver until finished.
Speak clearly, deliberately, and close to mouthpiece. Keep earpiece close to
ear.
TO CLEAR-When conversation is finished replaced receiver promptly, ear-
piece downwards. Unless receiver is on its rest you cannot
be called.
Post Office Telephones instruction card (excerpt), 1932.
HTML coding by John Chenery, who has a scan of the original and full transcription at Light Straw
Probably many places in the United States never will have the dial system. It is most needed in large cities where many calls are crowded into small areas.
National Geographic magazine, October 1937.
What will be the further progress 50 years ahead. I wonder. Maybe by then, the now-familiar dial will have been replaced by some form of tone-driven signalling system enabling subscribers to make their own connections - almost instantaneously - to any telephone anywhere on the globe, and copies of this very address will be despatched electronically between students of telephone history.
Conclusion of an address by F Vear: An Historical Account of Telephone Engineering. Delivered to the North Eastern Centre of the IPOEE in Leeds, March 14, 1939. Reproduced in full in the Telecoms Heritage Journal, Second Half 2002.
The whole of the public telephone service between this country and countries abroad has been suspended until further notice. Telephone communication is however being maintained with Belgium, France, Holland, Italy, Luxembourg and Switzerland for Government Services only and is strictly confined to fully accredited and officially authorised persons.
Post Office Circular, 6 September 1939.
An artificial satellite at the correct distance from the earth could make one revolution every 24 hours, i.e., it would remain stationary above the same spot and would be within optical range of nearly half of the earth's surface. Three repeater stations, 120 degrees apart in the correct orbit could give television and microwave coverage to the entire planet.
Arthur C. Clarke, July 1945.
Television won't be able to hold on to any to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.
Daryl F Zanuck, president of 20th Century Fox, 1946 (source: Scotland on Sunday, April 30, 2000).
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
Thomas Watson, head of IBM, in 1943 (according to The Sunday Times, 12 December 1999) or 1946 (according to FT Oct 6, 1999) or 1949 (according Scotland on Sunday).
In the shape of a small metal cylinder about a half-inch long, the transistor contains no vacuum grid, plate or glass envelope to keep the air away. Its action is instantaneous, there being no warm-up delay since no heat is developed as in a vacuum tube.
The working parts of the device consist solely of two fine wires that run down to a pinhead of solid semi-conductive material soldered to a metal base. The substance on the metal base amplifies the current carried to it by one wire and the other wire carries away the amplified current.
New York Times, 1947
The present working life of an operator may be taken as approximately four years. A female telephonist entering the service on her seventeenth birthday will be paid a matter of £850 in the four years she may be expected to remain, that is, of course, provided that she is not rejected in the course of training.
M.J.H.Ellis in "Traffic" (the Journal for Telecommunications Traffic Officers), October 1954. Quoted in Telecommunications Heritage Journal, May 2004.
I demonstrated in London that it was possible to call Glasgow for 2d. If you'd seen the girl at the other end you'd have said it was worth it.
Postmaster General Ernest Marples at the opening of STD, Bristol, 5 December 1958. Quoted in Telecoms Heritage Journal, First Half 2002.
In planning the introduction of STD, the opportunity has been taken to examine many of the traditional aspects of the service to ensure that the needs of a fully automatic service will be met in the most satisfactory and economic manner. A national numbering system has been produced which can be applied with the minimum of change to the existing service and which should meet the needs of the country for at least the next 100 years.
The General Plan for Subscriber Trunk Dialling, H.E.Francis, Post Office Electrical Engineers Journal, January 1959