Victorian Anxieties and Future Visions

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Buy your car today, on Delivery fees may apply A hoy hoy and welcome to Your Dead T Me, the Radio four comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner and I'm a public historian author and broadcaster. And today it is our one hundred fiftieth episode and so we are picking up the receiver and dialing back exactly one hundred fifty years to learn all about the invention of the telephone and to help us with this special anniversary episode We have two very special callers on the line. In History Corner. He's professor of history at the University of Aberismth, and he's an expert on the history and culture of Victorian science. You may have read one of his wonderful books, including How The Victorians Tk us to the Moon, and you'll remember him from our episode on Vital Electricity. It's Pfessor Yuanne Morris. Welcome back, Yuan. It's a pleasure to be here again, Greg de to have you back And in Comedy Corner, she's an award winning comedian, writer, actor, and podcaster. You may have seen her hilarious standup shows or on the TV, on Last One Lughing Island, QI, The Mash Report, Live at the Apollo. Maybe you've heard her radio for show Too longong, didn't read. But you'll certainly remember her from one of our many past episodes, including the History of General Elections and Julie Dobiny. It is the wonderful Catherine Bohard H I'm so happy to be back. I feel like it's so nice if you list to my credits, but here I'm just a history nerd. I'm like, teeach me something. I'm so excited. Science, you say. Science. Beause I did study history, but pretty much every place I could chose to study social history. And so I'm out of my depath. I'm excited. I'm guessing you own a telephone, Katherine, I mean, you know we don't have to be right in the modern world? Yes, and I'm not sure I am one of those people who are like, if I didn't have to, I wouldn't. I think I'm a bit like, it's my special friend. Me and my special friend. Do you know anything about its invention? It's early history? I mean, I've heard the words Alexander Grahbell.ure I'll hear them again. You know, I watch a lot of period dramas. I've seen a lot of calling an operator. and yeah, I have some sense of that, but I don't have any sense of the science of it. I don't know how that worked. I'm assuming tin cans and string. Is that right? So, what do you know This is the so what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you are loving listener might know about today's subject. And like Catherine, you know what a phone is, but what about the phone's early history and invention? Maybe you've heard of Alexander Graham Bell like Catherine had, Maybe you've seen period movies, where people are speaking to complicated looking contraptions and asking to speak to the operator But was Bell really the first inventor How did people react to this novel communication technology? and what does it mean to get your wires crossed? Let's find out Right, Catherine, our big anniversary year eighteen seventy six, at least for our purposes. Okay. So're to rewind to before the telephone and get you up to speed on what came before. So how do you think people had previously communicated across long distances before the telephone and of course I'm gonna discount sending post because that feels too easy. So presumably Morse code was a way of communicating over long distances. Pigeons? A good? Yeah. Pigeons were always pretty good, weren't they? Yeah send a pigeon in the post. Yes. exactly the post. Yearning I assume. Yeah want pick ped off from that vibe wise yeah. like looking out windows. See, Right. That's what I'm assuming. Right, sort of some Wuthering Heights energy. Yeah ye. Sighing in a window seat. Did that not convey your message afar? I mean, sure. I mean, if you're great romantic, maybe it did. Yeah, I think I am.ut your heart brereak into the ether and hope that they heard you How did people communicate over long distances beforefore we're into electricity. The real answer is the electric telegraph. Beyond that, really, information travels essentially as fast as you can You can send a letter at exactly the same speed that you could go if you went by horse It would have taken weeks for news to reach from months from Australia, weeks from Central Europe or America. And so yeahet mean so you on, obviously the telegraph machine, that is the crucial world changing technology, isn't it? From the beginning of the nineteenth century People start trying to figure out, look, you know we can do all sorts of interesting spectacular things with electricity, shocks, sparks, I mean all sorts of stuff If you can get that to happen at a distance, then you have some kind of way commommunication. And that's what people were trying to do. In eighteen thirty seven in the UK and London. Charles Weent and William Fatheril Cook take out what's the first patent for an electromagnetic telegraph. Basically a gizmo that allows you to send information at the distance pretty much at dan by the same time. the side of the Atlantic Samuel Morse invents his version of telegraph And in connection with that, he invented the Morse code, that kind of system of dots and dashes. that translates inilletts the alphabet and allows you to send information tw So by the end of the forties being the fifties Telegraph lines proroliferating across the UK, across Europe across North America typically following the railway lines. It's largely a kind of commercial tool conveying information about all sorts of commercial. St still water. That's kind of boring. basasically as quickly as possible. Where's the gossip telegram? That was my Well there's a chap called mrter Reoyuters whos set up a news agency because he realized down in a second, I can make some money on this. Okay, great, really? Yeah. I don't think of Reoyuters as my gossip brag anymore. but sure. But maybe I'll start to. It's not quite good his as anymore but yes, so that's not quite gossip stuff trying to get information more and more quickly. I mean, that's the telegraphic world of the eighteen sixties, eighteen seventies That's where the telephone comes in. And that's where we meet Alexander Graham Bell, who you mentioned, Catherine. Do you know where he was born? Do you know which country he was born in? No. I mean, Belle to me feels British but maybe that's not true. I don't know. British is correct, but it's not not England How was he a Sar? He is. Yeah. he wass born in Scotland.' was born in Edinburgh, eighteen forty seven Yuan his family are interested in speech and sound because his mother is deaf. and so he's interested in this sound technology for communication purposes. Yes, absolutely I mean, his mother is deaf comes weirdly from a family of Ilk Krushz. people who teach you how to speak properly It's the Bell background hisis father, if I remember, actually develops a kind of sign language that allows him to communicate with his wife. Bell comes from a background that cares about commommunication conveying things in new ways go over to Canada and the states Bell There's a musician. He works as an locutionist. He works with deaf people communicating to the deaf. amongst other people He teaches he teaches a young a young ladyl That's the pointer I Mabel. Yeah. Mel Mabel. A young lady called Mabel, who's the daughter of a chap called Garden Hubbard. It's good nameing it Garden the Hubb Hopper.. goodness Mab. And Mabel is deaf, and lo and behold, Belle marries her sort of problematic marriage cllacksim time, I think, because ye But at least' the thing that we'd be allowed to do. Yes, sorry. we've invested in that. this series, we spent some money. I'm surprised took this long. Honestly, everything I know about history says you should have really been ready to go. He did wait if sho was after eighteen, which on this show is actually good. prettyt rare. I mean, I know it's a low bar, but you know, is Late teens always better than early te. I can't help but feel. So he had a deaf mother, deaf wife. He's quite a complicated, controversial character in the deeaf community today because later on in life he argues against sign language. He's not a great hero, but we don't have time to talk about that so much. So I'll just sort of move on and say teelegraphy is a sort of ancient Greek modern compound word meaning faraw writing, tele faraway graffe writing Telephony is fara awayay sound Is that what the new bigig exciting question mark is for Alexander Greenberau, How do you get sound across a long distance? Yes, I mean, I think that's it Exactly There isn't really a very good way of doing it Soing Hello. I love earning. Yearning I think it's What about yearning or screaming Okayys. Yearning had limited market value. I probably disagree. Okay. That thing out of the BBC. Channel of yeararning. Allright. There were things like the Enchanted Lar LY RE, not not the lying sort. invented by Charles Whedstone a teelegraph chap Rabb eighteen sixty, Philip Rice invents what he calleds a telephone. So he invents the word telephone. He invented the word telephone. Okay. and he invented an instrument That could Electrically transmit sound over a distance, but not voice. Is Rice getting like muffled sound even for speaking of voice? Is he getting like you're in a tunnel on a train? Is he getting? You're just going Bz. So you' not putting your phone in rice yet? Hello, Hello Hello Anyone No I lik it. you know. Two other big inventors we should mention, have you ever heard of Elisha Greay or Antonio Omocci No, but I'm that Elisha might has a chance of being a woman? No no. Okay. I was like for a second. I was like, is it just Elijah? Is that basically what you're saying to me? Okay, no, I haven't heard of either of those. O men. They are the two big names, I think we can put up as co or rival inventors of the telephone alongside Belle. Rrival inventors V very. certainly from their individual They're not collaborative. they're not allies. Not collaborative. riv. Yeah. absolutely not. All three are rivals? Yeah. say their names be So Antonio Mocci is an Italian who I think moves the states, I think Yes, I mean, he moved to the States He invents what he calls the reform A Beautiful. It Thes electrophone no, yeah, Eactly. Yeah. Anne takes out a patent in eighteen seventy one or a caveat for a patent I to say I kind a promissory note. got there yet, but I'm laying dibbs on this placeaceholder. I'mm working on When it emerges Looking at accounts of meritary's invention, can ofa some things that a telephone can do There are weird aspects as well. I mean, for example According to Mo Users have to be insulated they have to stand on glass stools Oh Totally reasonable expectation. Everybody has glass stools lying around after all. What level of simultaneousness is this occurring within the three of them? This is eighteen seventy one, so this this is all pretty close. He's the first to file in America a patent that we might say is telephonic. Yes, o. But is it his patent or is it him going? No. Just hang the hang. Totally gettingrightened. It isind a lot of on this fire And also he gutted Mayoi, he's not made of money this guy. He can't afford to keep the patent. It's another ten dollars, isn't it?es I think that haveave it last a few years and then you then you have to put your money down to keep it going ye. It's ten bucks. Mirature doesn't have ten bucks, so the caveat lapses.. You have to put credit on your phone. Yeah. You could pay monthly on your patients. Yeah So in the meantime, Eisha Gray Grey is somebody who's made his money and is making his money of developing new kind of variations, new improvements on telegraph technology He patterns what's called a harmonic telegraph and a sound telegraph. So yeah U What year is that? eighteen seventy four. eighteen seventy fourhere Yeah. And then in eighteen seventy six Bell goes, well, Bing, essentially and takes his stuff to the patent office and he gets his caveat on the patent to say that, I can do this thing This is the famous case, right? Because technically, Grey's the first one through the door So Greay Wright first at the patent office But what he submitted was a patent caveat, so not the full patent An hour or so later, Belle turned up, or rather Belle's lawyers turned up And they submitted the full thing, the full patent application So Belle and Greay file on the same day that Belle is awarded the patent The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. 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Download the app using promo code radio DYW. and place your first bet of a dollar or more for a chance to double your winnings on your next ten bets. Open to new users in New Jersey who are twenty one or older. Max bet of twenty five dollars for boosted wnings. Max additional winnings thousand five hundred dollars hundred per bet. Profit boost tokens expire fourteen days after receipt. See Caesars dot com slash promos for full terms. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call one eight hundred gambler U to this point, I just want to say, we've had telephone, we've had tele autograph,'ve had telephoneo, we've had harmonic telegraph. They're lovely words for this new technology. Katherine Given your creativity, if I had to ask you to rebrand the phone with a new name, what would you reedub the technology of a fan best friend. Candid little helper. Charming. Yeah. So the legal battle literally went down to the wire. Gry didn't take that lightly. He filed legal actions. He tried to argue his case, but ultimately Bell was found to be the official winner, whether he was the moral victor, Catherine, I'll leave up to you. I think the lesson here is that boys should learn to work together. That's my lesson is that actually they could have probably come up with it together earlier if they put their little brains together but they decided to make it a competition as they must. And look look what happened. We do know that Alexander Graham Bell does make the very first official telephone call He demonstrates this by calling his assistant Oh he doesn't call Greay to be like, n,. Is that what you would do? That's in my head what their vibe is. Okay. okay, so he calls his assistant. He does. Where? Where is his assistant? Well, that's not not that far away. Yeah. The assistant is in the next room. good first first known telephone messages Mrter Watson, come here. I need you. I want you, isn't it? I have want youite I feel that's quite heated rivalry. I want you, I need you. Yeah. Also Wats with Watson's always getting relegated to second. Yes.. You always need a mr. Watson as your assistant I want you I want you. That is romantic. We finally got to here. Electromagnetic yearning. love. Yuan, given that Bell could easily have just shouted into the next room. It hasn't really proved that this technology is effective over distance. It's proved that it's effective over ten meters. So Were people initially know bedazzled by this invention or they a bit like, Well, that's just a parlar trick If it's possible to be simultaneously bedazzled and unimpressed, then by and large people are They dazzled and unimpressed. Right Yeah. On the one hand, wow The other part is What do we do with this? This doesn't, for example, solve the problem of being able to send even more information even more quickly and telegraph lines. because Voices aren't actually that efficient as means of quick communication I mean, all this d d, d fter dash It is a lot quicker, a lot more efficient than sayang. Yes. mister Watson. I come here, I need you. That's their issue. They're like, o great. so now we have to listen to you Yap on. we just want to get to the information. I don't know. what'spp voice messages? They're basically mini podcasts now. I've got friends who leave five minute messages and it's like C come on, just send a text. Is is such a male reaction the opportunity to chat I'm like, what are you talking about? How nice. Okay, so they just think inefficent. So it's not quite clear what this amazing. teechnological novelty is four, there are technical problems, right? Fuzzy interference, noisy There's an issue of crossed wres, which is quite a literal thing. The wires get crossed. Yes, literally. Literally. wires brush up against each other. If two wires touch each other, then the messages might get confused, go in different directions Reception with early telephones really isn't that C It's buzzy, it's crackly problems of kind of being able to sort of discriminate noise from the background. I'm There is the whole business of you talking to the operator and then the operator putting you through. It's also the party line, isn't it? Yes. So sha a shared phone line. Though my new party lines lasted for quite a long time, I can remember as a child in the nineteen seventies what is the party l? You're on a party line. Yeah. You share the line with some of your neighbourors. st if they're on the phone You can't be on the phone. but you can you hear what there's the? Yeah Yeah. Bring it back. I was gonna ask gently Catherine, where do you be interested in eavesdropping? and your reaction tells me perhaps? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't mind Bring it back. Are you joking? bring it back? That's fantastic. Why doeses anyone ever get off the phone? I'd be like, Yeah I'm like bring my meals to me. Who needs podcasts? I'm just listening to the neighborss. Marri at numberine is I' making another From eighteen seventy eight, this is a brand new invention, the swwitchboard Why is this important As more and more people get phones, as more and more people on the network then connecting people gets more difficult, more important, more complicated So switchboards are a way of to a degree automating businessus of kind of tcking somebody's end and s of plugging it into somebody else's socket operating offices switchboards are entirely staffed by women before they started employing, young women as telephone operators they did try young men. after all, that was the history telegraph operators from the mid eighteen forties have typically been young men And they were typically a pretty raucous crew. And that kind of telegraph culture didn't really seem to work And The telephone exchange. Shocking But women are, you'll be astonished to know. docile, well mannered. they don't misbehave They don't gossip, they don't do anything. They don't s This is a track. What do you? They just sit there and obedience they do as they' trusted, whichich is quite a rare thing the nineteenth century for women to be given this level of trust in a commercial operation actually. Yes, I'm think. this is an important new kind of employment for middle class, young women. That's huge. Yeah Yeah the vors an independent job something that allows degrees of financial independence and feeds into that kind of late Victorian wow, technology of the future I mean to makes women like that part of that Yeah kind of technological. And they get They get a charming nickname. Do you know what the nickname is? Girls, I want a better I want a better name. You're not far off. that's slightly inappropriate probably. the hello girls. Hello girls That's in the eighteen eighties, they're the hello girls. And initially you'd just say, can you just put my friend Jim on and they'd like, sureure up And then obviously after a while there's too many gems and then they have to start asking you for actual details of the number. And the spread of the phone iss really interesting. It spreads very quickly in America. So you get a very quick uptake in the states. It's really sort of popular in the cities by eighteen eighty two There's a telephone for every two hundred people in Chicago whichich is amazing. In London, it's every three thousand people Now I said hello girls which obviously is a charming thing. Do you know where the word hello comes from No So it's the official telephone greeting. Okay. and it's not the one Alexander Grahenbell wanted Do you know what he wanted? No. I said at the beginning of the show A hoy, hoy. Are you joking He wanted What if you're in a bad mood? Oh Hihoi, I'm very angry. No, what are you talking? Yeah he went to a Hoihoi. And what was hello? hisis reaction when heard he didn't get it. Hell. Oh That's great. Thank you. That's really good. So where did hello come from? weird rich boy. Like Ewan, why do we say hello on the telephone? Beacause it's one of the most popular words on the planet. I mean, like a hoi hoi. It's distinct Hello Yeah. It's a word that hopefully is going to kind of It's Thomas Edison's idea, if I remember right here. It's Edison who suggests that hello It would certainly be better than a high high as a form of greeting when you're communicating. But they're both haaling words aren't? A H high high is what you say to a sailor when you're hailing them and then hello. And in America, hello was a haaling word. Hello. Yes. But in the UK, hello is a phrase of surprise. If I bumped into you on holiday, if the two of us were in the same cafe in Italy, we'd be like, Hello, what you doing here? So it was a word that existed already. D sort of to mask your disappointment at seeing a local on your one bloody holiday Nie Bohart gets everywhere. It eight days on the boat. herello Hello So hello becomes the official word because of Edison. He says it's got good, nice, clear. It cuts through the noise on the interference and it becomes one of the most popular words on the planet and the hello girls are so named Can you imagine though if we did a Hoihoi instead? No. A lion or Richie song. A Hoi Hoi is me you're looking for. just so many. I just think I'm fair to think how many boat shoes we'd have to be wearing.'s just I'm very glad it's not. Okay I just think the high high goals doesn't quite the high go. I'm bringing it back. I'm bringing it back. Hoi Hoi magazine Actually, there are plenty of concerns that were raised by this new technology arriving into people's homes and into towns and cities and buildings. So Catherine, I've got a mini quiz for you here. These are seven things the Victorians feared might happen to society because of the telephone. Six or true, one I've made up. Can you guess which one I've made up? Let's go Did people fear? that women might commit adultery from home with the new technology of the phone Men maybe would not stand up when phoning a woman were people fearing that there might be phone calls happening between people wearing their pajamas There might be fears of lower class people phoning up posh people and harassing them on the phone There might be fears that businessmen would hog the phone lines and women couldn't use the phone was so busy. we fears the telephones would invade domestic privacy And of course, casual telephone speech, little idle Chitchat would destroy face to face manners and etiquette. So which of these complaints, worries, concerns was not of Victorian anxiety about the phone? They all seem like pretty Victorian anxiety U perhaps I'm inclined towards Pajamas? Is that maybe? What's your thinking behind that? It mean the pajamas are the sitting down one, they just seem even more parod like of a parody of themselves They all seem like they'd be worried about it. M I'm going to go I'm going to go sitting down. Okay Well, I'm afraid you are wrong. They were worried, they thought. But if men are sitting down on the phone, that's wild inappropriate. They should stand to speak to a woman And the pajamas thing too. Well they weren't wearing trous? Yeah on the phone. Yeah yeah that tr. No, the one was a lie, I said businessmen would hog the phone lines and women wouldn't be able to get on the phone Exact opposite problem. Yeah Their fear was that women would gossip on the phones and men couldn't do business, Catherine If the resource is finite, that's a reasonable concern, I think. But okay, fair enough, that's the made up one. good for you The Nuans window Well, it's been a fascinating chat, but it is time now for the nuance window. This is the part of the show where Catherine and I quietly eavesdrop on the party line for two minutes Professor Yuan tells us something we need to know about the history of the early telephone My stopw is ready. Take it away, Professor Morris We've been talking about the telephone invented in eighteen seventy six I want to tell you about another invention. place almost at the same time as the telephone It's revealing and it's important because it tells us a lot, I think about what the telephone meant to the Victorians. Almost as soon as the telephone was invented People started talking about this other new invention. that hadn't quite been invented yet but was going to be invented really honest Gve any second now This was the telectroscope telectroscope essentially was going to be telephone with vision So you get wonderful cartoons in punch. ' see Meter and Peter sitting in their Victorian parlour talking to their kids, playing tennis somewhere far out in the colonies. and it's always on the cusp of being invented throughout the eighties, throughout the nineties, it's always just about to be invented And hvestiously N is. But what I think is fascinating about that is what it shows us about the telephone and what the telephone meant. It's the future. I mean, that's what all of those sorts of technologies meant to the Victorians