You're Dead to Me - History of the Telephone: 150th anniversary special

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

For our 150th episode, Greg Jenner is joined by historian Professor Iwan Morus and comedian Catherine Bohart to learn about the history of the telephone on its 150th anniversary. The inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, was granted the American patent for his new communication system 150 years ago, on the 7th March 1876, beating out fellow inventor Elisha Gray who had submitted his patent on the very same day. But Bell still had to convince people that this novel form of communication would change their lives, and so he set out on a promotional tour across America and England, showcasing the wonder of his new invention, and even gifting a pair of phones to Queen Victoria. In this episode, we look at the first few decades of the telephone’s existence: the dramatic race between Bell, Gray and an Italian immigrant named Meucci to be the first to patent it, how quickly it was rolled out across America, how the technology actually worked, and its problems, including the ease with which people could eavesdrop on their neighbour’s conversations. We also look at the rise in jobs for women it provided, and the social anxieties it provoked, which mirror many of the worries voiced today about smartphones and social media. And we examine some early telephone etiquette: should you answer the phone with ‘hello’ or ‘ahoy-hoy’, and did a man need to be wearing trousers when speaking on the phone to a woman? If you’re a fan of the scientific innovations of the past, feuding inventors, and the competing anxieties and opportunities of new technology, you’ll love our episode on the History of the Telephone. If you want to learn more about Victorian science with Professor Iwan Morus, listen to our episode on Vital Electricity. And for more from Catherine Bohart, check out our episodes on pirate queen Grainne O’Malley, Julie d'Aubigny, or the History of General Elections. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Rosalyn Sklar and Katharine Russell Written by: Rosalyn Sklar, Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

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Mr. Holmes, They were the footprints of a gigantic hound. Start listening to Sherlock Holmes, the complete BBC collection, wherever you get your audiobooks. Ahoy! Hoy! And welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner, and I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today, it is our 150th episode, and so we are picking up the receiver and dialing back exactly 150 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 Aberystwyth 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 Took Us to the Moon, and you'll remember him from our episode on Vital Electricity. It's Professor Yuan Morris. Welcome back, Yuan. It's a pleasure to be here again, Greg. Delighted to have you back. And in Comedy Corner, she's an award-winning comedian, writer, actor and podcaster.

You may have seen her hilarious stand-up shows, on the TV, on Last One Laughing Island, QI, The Mash Report, live at the Apollo. Maybe you've heard her Radio 4 show. Too long, didn't read. But you'll certainly remember her from one of our many past episodes, including the history of general elections. And Julie Dobini, who is it? Of course, it is the wonderful, Catherine Bohars. Hi, I'm so happy to be back.

I feel like it's so nice if you need to list my credits, but here I'm just a history nerd. I'm like, teach me something. I'm so excited. I was going to ask, it's been a little while since we've had you on because you've been so busy touring the world and being glamorous. That's nice. So I was going to ask, have you sort of maintained your history nerd energy? Yeah, and I came here fully ready to cast aspersions about homosexuality.

And then I found it's the telephone. And I've been like, well, can inanimate. Some of these, I mean, maybe the older TV, the televisions were a little bit of fame or like a little fay. I think maybe I can maybe say that. But I think it's going to be, I would have to pay more attention. Science, you say. Science. Because I did study history, but pretty much every place I could chose to study social history.

And so I'm out of my depth. but I'm excited. I'm guessing you own a telephone, Catherine. I mean, you know, we all have to, 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, first 25 years or so. I mean, I've heard the words Alexander Graham Bell. Sure. And you'll hear them again. Yes. 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? Sort of right, isn't it, Yuan? Slightly more complicated, though. Fine. Seems I'm out of my depth too, then. Okay.

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. In fact, you're probably listening to this podcast on a phone right now. you modern. 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 was 1876, at least for our purposes. Okay. So we're going 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 going to discount sending post because that feels too easy. So what else would people might have done? Okay.

So presumably Morse code was a way of communicating over long distances. Pigeons. Good. Yeah. Pigeons were always pretty good, weren't they? Yeah, send a pigeon in the post. Yes. Is that kind of post?

Yearning? I assume that one picked up from that vibe-wise yeah like locking out windows see right that's what I'm assuming

right sort of some bothering heights energy yeah sighing in a window did that not convey your message I mean sure I mean if you're a great romantic

maybe it did yeah I think I am put your heartbreak into the ether and hope that they heard you how did people communicate over long distances before we're into electricity

the real answer is the electric tone That's when it all starts from. Go back before that. Fire beacons, I mean, chonky and right over the hair rims. Fire on the hills. That's the thing. Semaphopoles.

You could send signals. What kind of line of sight in that kind of way. Yes, indeed. Carrier pigeons. All sorts of ways of conveying pretty basic, straightforward, not really very complicated information over long distances. Beyond that, really, information travels essentially as fast as you can.

Right. You can send a letter at exactly the same speed that you could go if you went by horse carriage. It's the crazy that I'm already like, oh, sounds nice. Really? It just sounds peaceful. It sounds like, you know, like, because at the minute you send an email and before you even had the moment to be like, I did it, I answered an email.

They've answered you again and you're like, no, it's not my turn. How's it my turn? The sweet relief of being like, best of luck. Glad's to the postman and then being like, I'll deal with that when it returns. This is a peak Victorian complaint, Catherine. They said the world got too fast too quickly and they couldn't cope anymore.

Wow. Can't keep up. Yeah. We'd have taken weeks for news to reach from months from Australia, weeks from Central Europe or America. Wow. And so you're right. I mean, so you're on obviously the telegraph machine.

That is the crucial world-changing technology, isn't it? Yeah. From the beginning of the 19th 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 the distance, then you have some kind of way of communication. And that's what people are trying to do.

In 1837, in the UK, in London, Charles Weston and William Fulbegill Cook take out what's the first patent for an electromagnetic telegraph. Basically a gizmo that allows you to send information at a distance. I'm so sorry. Is electric telegraph, are we, am I thinking of the same thing when it's like stop every three words? Is that a telegraph? Yeah. Okay, great. Why do I feel like the stop is so important? You guys don't seem, you're looking at me like, what? When you said stop, I thought you want to say hammer time. So I apologize. My millennial instinct, just I immediately went, MC Hammer, we're doing MC Hammer? No. But is it, it is where you have to kind of express the punctuation. Yes. Yes. The first telegraph is what they call the needle telegraph. And depending on, what button you press at the transmitting end,

the needles will point at a different letter. So you kind of spell out words. That was the Wheatston and Cook telegraph. Pretty much at around by the same time, the outside 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 into letters of the alphabet and allows you to send information that way. It was the more system, or at least the more system of transmission that really catches on. Once it becomes clear,

the telegraphy is going to be important, it's going to be lucrative, then lots of people are trying to get in on the act. And that's going to be a feature of the telephone as well. Yeah. So by the end of the 40s, being the 50s, telegraph lines proliferating across the UK, across Europe, across North America,

typically following the railway lines. Lots of business information, lots of government information. It's largely a kind of commercial tool conveying information about all sorts of commercial stuff. That's kind of boring, man. Basically as quickly as possible. Where's the gossip telegraph? That's my question. Well, there's a chap called Mr. Reuters who set up a news agency because he realised, hang on a second, I can make some money on this.

Okay, great. Really? Really? Yeah. I don't think of Reuters as my gossip rag anymore. Sure. But maybe I'll start to. It's not quite off the business as anymore.

But yeah, so that's... Not quite gossip stuff. Yeah. 1866 telegraph wire across the Atlantic. And then the business case really kicks off. If you can know the prices, say, of wheat, when it's being put onto a ship in New York or Boston or whatever to take those days, weeks across the Atlantic, then you can make a financial killing. You can speculate. I mean, this is the origins. serious stock trading.

I think what we're about to reveal is that I don't have any sense of financial speculation. But why does knowing the price of it when it gets on the boat in New York with information transmission being possible mean that you can? Because you know something that your competitors don't. You're going to buy it when it arrives on the market, knowing how much it's going to, knowing how much it costs then. Because it's still going to take weeks to come across in the boat. So you can't send wheat by telegraph.

So the food itself is on the. about going slowly, but your information you've got in advance, you can buy in advance. You can pre-buy things when they're cheaper. Okay, wow. So it's almost, well, actually, almost I think it is a trade really in information. And that information is valuable. Garing it quickly is valuable. So lots and lots of inventors trying to figure out ways of not just simply sending one stream

of information down the wire at the same time, but two streams of information down the wire or four streams of information. So duplex telegraphy, quadruplex telegraphy. all trying to get information more and more quickly. I mean, that's the telegraphic world of the 1860s, 1870s. That's where the telephone comes in. Yeah, 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, Bell, to me, feels British, but maybe that's not true. I don't know. British is correct, but it's not England. Oh, is he a skull? He is.

Yeah. He's born in Scotland. He's born in Edinburgh. 1847. 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. I mean, more than that, he comes weirdly from a family of eluccianists, people who teach you how to speak properly. That's the bell background. So he's interested in speech, he's interested in communication,

His mother is deaf. His father, if I remember rightly, develops a kind of sign language that allows him to communicate with his wife. So Bell comes from a background that cares about speech, communication, conveying things in new ways. They go over to Canada and the States. Bell is a musician. He works as a lacutionist.

He works with deaf people, communicating to the death. Amongst other people, he teaches... Well, he teaches a young lady... That's the point where I forget the name. Mabel, yeah? Mabel, a young lady called Mabel, who's the daughter of a chap called Gardner Hubbard.

It's a good name, isn't it, Gardner Hubbard? Gardner Hubbard, goodness me. And Mabel is deaf. And lo and behold, Belle marries her. Sort of problematic marriage claxon time, I think, because... Yeah. But at least she's... The sort of thing that we'd be allowed to do.

Yes, sorry, we've invested in that. We spent some money. Good for you. I'm surprised it took this long. Honestly, everything I know about history says, you should have really been ready to go. He did wait if she was after 18, which on this show is actually good.

Pretty rare. I mean, I know it's a low bar, but, you know. It is. I mean, late teens, always better than early, too, I can't help but feel. So he had a deaf mother, deaf wife. He's quite complicated, controversial character in the deaf 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 telegraphy is a sort of ancient Greek modern compound word meaning far away writing, telephony, far away, graphy writing. Telephony is faraway sound?

Is that what the new big exciting question mark is for Alexander Graham Bell? 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 that. Showsing, hello. I love yearning. Yarning, I think is great.

What about yearning or screaming? I mean, boys. Yearning had limited market value, I think, probably. Disagree. Okay. Is this going out of the BBC? It's the channel of yearning? All right.

There were things like The Enchanted Liar, L-Y-R-E, not the lying sort. Invented by Charles Wheatstone, a telegraph chap. You had a liar, a little harp thing, floating around in a room. And you could play not just music, but say, piano music. in music. It was basically transmitting sound from another instrument in another room. Oh wow. So kind of

music at a distance, yes. Round and about the 1860s, I think, gentleman by the name of Edward Levi Scott the Mountainville invented what he called a phonotograph, which was a device for

recording sound. Think of those kind of You know, sort of needles, lines, and a piece of paper. I mean, that was essentially the phonogram was being generated out of those. So you could have a recording of the sound, but you couldn't reproduce it. You couldn't listen to the noise.

Again, around 1860, Philip Rice invents what he calls a telephone. And he's German, right? So when we say Rice, it's R-E-I-S, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. So a telephone. Thank you for not letting me imagine the wrong thing.

Good for you. So he invented 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. There are people working on this. I mean, this is, as with a telegraph. You know, people can see that there's potential here.

It's part of that search for quicker, more efficient, more lucrative ways of telegraphing long distances very, very quickly. Is Rice getting, like, muffled sound? even from speaking of voice? Is he getting like you're in a tunnel on a train noise? Is he getting... Just going kind of buzz. So you're not putting your phone in rice yet. Hello. Hello. Anyone? No?

I liked it. Sorry, you know. I'm trying. I like to. Two other big inventors we should mention. Have you ever heard of Elisha Gray or Antonio Miochi? No, but I'm hopeful that Elisha might have a chance of being a woman? 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 other men. They are the two big names, I think, that we can put up as co- or rival inventors of the telephone alongside Bell. Rival inventors, I think, very much. Certainly from their individual. Well, they're not collaborative.

They're not allies. They're not collaborating. All three are rivals? Yeah. Okay, so say their names to be again? So Antonio Miyucci is an Italian who, I think, moves to the states, I think? Yes, I mean, he moves to the states. he invents what he calls the teletrophone.

Oh, beautiful, teletrofoam, yeah, great. Exactly. Yeah. And takes out a patent in 1871, or a caveat for a patent. I was to say, a kind of promissory note that I haven't quite got there yet, but I'm laying dibs on this.

Placeholder, I'm working on this. When it emerges. Looking at accounts of Meritch's invention, it clearly can There are some things that a telephone can do, but there are weird aspects as well. I mean, for example, according to Mucci, users have to be insulated. They have to stand on glass stools. Oh, totally reasonable expectations.

Everybody has glass stools lying around, after all. What level of simultaneousness is this occurring within the three of them? Oh, it's a good question. This is 1871, so this is... This is all pretty close. He's the first to file in America a patent that we might say is telephonic. Fair? Yes. But is it his patent or is it him going, just hang the fire against I'm totally going to be a patent?

Well, mind you, a lot of what's going on is kind of a hang your fire. And also he's gutted, Mayucci. He's not made of money, this guy. He can't afford to keep the patent. It's another $10, isn't it? Yes, I mean, I think the caveat lasts a few years and then you've got to, then you have to put your money down. keep it going, yeah, it's 10 bucks.

Merechie doesn't have 10 bucks, so the caveat lapses. You have to put credit on your phone page. That's crazy. Pay monthly on your patent. So in the meantime, Elisha Gray, again, Gray is somebody who's made his money and is making his money out of telegraph invention. Developing new kind of variations, new improvements on telegraph technology. again, trying to make this stuff work faster.

He patterns what's called a harmonic telegraph and a sound telegraph. So, yeah. What year is that? 1874. 1874. And then in 1876, Bell goes, well, Bing, essentially. Ding-dong. Takes his stuff to the patent office and he gets his caveat on the patent to say,

look, I can do this thing. This is the famous case, right? Because technically, Gray's the first one through the door. So Gray arrived first at the patent office, but what he submitted was a patent caveat. So not the full patent. An hour or so later, Bell turned up, or rather Bell's lawyers turned up,

and they submitted the full thing, the full patent application. The world of electrical invention is a relatively small one in the 1870s. Bell and Gray would certainly have known about each other. They would certainly have known they are working on kind of similar stuff. Are they working in the same city? Don't think so. No.

But I think they probably have to file in the same office. Yes, I mean, there's just the one. Yeah, the patent office. I'm just actually them, unless they're lawyers. Yeah. Who are doing this on their behalf. At that point, do you just not want anybody, like, helping you? Can you have no assistance in case people are spilling secrets?

Like, how do they know about each other's actual process? Bell's got support from his father. all right. So he's got some financial support. Yeah, I mean, he's got financial backing. So Mabel's dad is quite rich and has been backing him. So, and Gray hasn't quite got that cash. Yeah. I mean, Gray is prosperous.

Yeah. I mean, he's got his own kind of, what's he called? The Western Telegraph Company or something like that. None of these people are impugnious. Apart from Meucci. Well, apart from Mucci. He's like, excuse me, can I borrow a tent? I like him.

It's telling that he's the one that's lost that in a certain. No, it's such. So it's really close. Yeah. So Bell and Grey file on the same day, but Bell is awarded the patent. Up to this point, I just want to say, we've had telephone, we've had tele autograph,

we've had teletrophono, we've had harmonic telegraph. They're lovely words for this new technology. Catherine, given your creativity, if I had to ask you to rebrand the phone with a new name, what would you re-dub the technology of a phone as? Man's best friend. Handed little helper.

Oh, charming. Yeah. Youan, we've obviously got two rival inventors filing a patent on the same day. The obvious question, and I think Catherine, apologies if it is unfair, but I think both of us are not really great on the engineering of how the phones work. I accept that. You went tin cans and string and I went, yes. So, Yuan, how do these early, very basic telephones of a sort work?

Think back, I hope, to school physics. You know that, if you take your... magnet. This is Michael Faraday in the 1830s. Take one magnet. Take one coil of wire. Move the magnet in and out of the coil of wire. When the magnet moves relative to the coil, it generates a current in the coil. That's the basic idea. The way that pretty much, I mean, all of these rival inventions more or less is you needed to find a way to get your voice, well, to get a voice to make a magnet vibrate back and forth. So the magnet is kind of vibrating back and forth in the coil. And as it does that, it's creating a current. And that

current varies in the way that your voice is varying. It's getting the same thing to happen at the other end. Yeah. And that's reproducing the sound. But you need a microphone to capture that sound, do you? Is that fair? Yes. I mean, I mean, what a, I mean, what a, what a telephone receiver, a transmitter is, essentially, is a microphone. And yeah, it's funnily enough, it's around about this time that people like David Edward Hughes and Edison are inventing things like microphones. So lots of interest in that kind of using electricity to do things around and about sound. What I'm hearing is a sort of science version of it's carried on the wind. Okay, that doesn't make any sense to me, but I believe you.

And will that do? That's the key to going on with Bob and Science, I think. Yeah. I believe you is a thing. So the legal battle literally went down to the wire. Gray 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 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 Gray to be like, nah, nah, nah, nah. Is that what you would do? That's in my head what their vibe is. Okay. But okay, so he calls his assistant. He does. Where is his assistant?

Well, that's not that far away. Yeah. The assistant is in the next room. Oh, very good, nice. The first known telephone message is, Mr Watson, come here. I need you. I want you, isn't it?

I want you. I want you. I feel that's quite heated rivalry erotica. It really is. I want you, I need you. Also, Watts 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 yearning. Electromagnetic yearning. Yeah. At laugh. 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 10 metres. So were people initially bedazzled by this invention, or they're a bit like, well, that's just a parlor trick? If it's possible to be simultaneously bedazzled and unimpressed, then by large people are bedazzled and unimpressed. On the one hand, wow, you can send voices down the line. That's amazing.

The other part is, so 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 than telegraph lines. because voices aren't actually that efficient as means of quick communication. I mean, all those dot, dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dash, is a lot quicker, a lot more efficient than saying, Mr Watson.

I come here, I need you. That's their issue. They're like, oh, great, so now we have to listen to you, yap on. Is this what we just want to get to the information? I don't know. WhatsApp voice messages. They're basically mini podcast now. I've got friends who leave five-minute messages.

It's like, come on, just send a text. Such a male reaction to the opportunity to chat. I'm like, what are you talking about? How nice. Okay, so they just think inefficient. It's not quite clear what this amazing technological novelty is for. In 1876, the Americans hold their centennial exhibition in Philadelphia. Bell's invention is on show there.

It wins prizes. The judge is going, this is the most amazing thing we've ever seen. But it's still kind of not clear what it's for. So Bell goes campaigning. And he offers his patent to the Western Union Telegraph company, a very powerful company that have a monopoly on the Telegraph. And he says to them, I will give you my technology for $100,000. And they say, no, there's no future in this.

Which is now studied in business schools as one of the worst decisions in business history. It's not. Incredible. It's legendary. Wow, love that. Okay. So Bell had to go on his own, right? So he hasn't got the big money.

He's got his father-in-law, garden the hubbage. Yes, so, I mean, they set up a Bell telephone company, which, you know, which did okay. I mean, it's changed its name at 1.2. What was it now? Oh, yes, AT&T. Yeah. Oh, okay. I've heard of them.

Yeah. They're still there. And Bell started doing, actually, what all successful 19th century inventors do. Spectacle, showmanship. He goes and gives lectures, shows telephones off on stage, plays music down the telephone, playing the harp in New York and the punters in Boston can listen to the harp being played

or if it's in the UK playing God save the Queen so making a spectacle out of it, making a show out of it because he's ready to sell it to them he wants this to go into communities homes, towns, businesses he doesn't want it to be just like an engineering thing absolutely but does he have

Is he in that kind of position? Like, does he have a load of telephone sat around that he is ready to sell? Or is he hyping before he has production? Oh, he's Elon Musking. Yeah, I guess I'm just wondering, yeah, like, where is he in this? He's doing a bit of better. I mean, he's certainly hyping before he has production. Okay.

And if somebody rolled up at the end of one of these elections, like, okay, right, I'll buy one. Yeah. It would be, well, very well, so you may join the waiting list. Right, okay. Because after all, I was with all of these things, you don't just need to buy the apparatus. You don't just need to buy the telephone.

There's a whole infrastructure. There's a whole network that goes along with getting the telephone to work, to be a thing. But they can build on the existing telegraph cabling system across the America. Yes. I mean, they have an advantage there. Sure. In lots of places, you know, those cables are there.

So they would need to connect those cables to individual houses, individual businesses. and you don't have a telegraph in your room. You don't even have a telegraph by and large in your office unless you're a very large outfit. Okay. There are telegraph offices and you send your boy to the telegraph office.

Yeah. We're the message and then it's... We've all got a boy if that. Of course. Of course. And it's sent down the line. Yeah. So it needs to be connected.

Yeah. So there has to be a new infrastructure. So yes, there does need to be money behind all of the. And as part of Bell's promo tour, he goes on tour. In fact, in 1877, he puts a ring on it. His bell, ring, ding, ding, there we go. He marries Mabel.

They go on honeymoon. And when she's told what the honeymoon is, he's like, a promotional tour of Britain, darling. And off they go to Britain. How would you feel if your partner married you? And then immediately said honeymoon actually is, we're off to an expo. You know, go to sell the products I'm like.

I can't fathom either happening. So I'm a bit like, hang on. I'm the wrong person to ask because I'm a performer. I'm like, I get it. listen, I'll book some gigs. Let's get this show on the road. I mean, we are hell, so I don't think that I'm a good example. If I'm Mabel, I'm like, are you kidding me? What the hell? And also, like, there's got to be an extra salt in the wind when you're, if you're deaf,

how effective is the telephone at this point for you, not very useful. And it's now my honeymoon? Oh, come on, I'd be livid. But it did get to meet the Queen? Or it is. Very what? You get to meet lots of her sores. you get to meet important influential people. And do you have to meet the Queen?

I would be raging. A true Irish woman. Yeah, I'd be like, are you kidding me? Hey, I'm Welsh, I'm with you. And also the post office in England and England in Wales, I'm assuming, becomes the agent for Bell's telephone as well. Yes, which is also quite handy. Yeah.

Because by this point, the Telegraph Network in the UK has been nationalised. And it's the post office that runs it. So having an inn. at the post office is quite a lot of help when you're trying to set up a new kind of communication network. Think you know Sherlock Holmes?

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They were the footprints of a gigantic hound. Start listening to Sherlock Holmes, the complete BBC collection, wherever you get your audiobooks. There are technical problems, right? Buzzy interference, noisy. There's an issue of crossed wires, which is quite a literal thing.

The wires get crossed. Yes, literally. Literally. If wires brush up against each other or close. So if two wires touch each other, then the messages might get confused, go in different directions. Reception with early telephones really isn't that good.

It's buzzy, it's crackly. There are problems of being able to discriminate noise from the background. There is the whole business of you talking to the operator and then the operator putting you through. There's also the party line, isn't it? Yes. So a shared phone line. Huh?

Though mind you, party lines lasted for quite a long time. I can remember as a child in the 1970. Yeah. In that, sorry, what is the party line? We're on a party line. You share the line with some of your neighbours. So if they're on the phone, you can't be on the phone.

Can you hear what they're saying? Yeah. Bring it back. I was going to ask gently, Catherine, would 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. Does anyone ever get off the phone? I'd be like, bring my meals to me. Who needs podcasts? I'm just listening in to The Neighbours. Mary at number nine is, I'm making another call. Why, that's exciting.

I mean, I think it features quite a lot in things like early Agatha Christie novel. I was going to say, it's a big thing in like in sort of comedy movies in the 1930s, like scruple comedies. People sort of getting on the wrong line to each other. The nosy neighbour is spending all of their time on the phone, literally listening on to... Curious neighbour, please, man, let's be respectful. Yes. So it's called the party line because you're sharing it with other parties. But for you, it would be a party line because it's a party. It's an all-day party.

So Bell's patent gave him 17 years, but then that lapsed, and then other businesses came in and started offering their own phone services. You suddenly got rival phone companies. You've got first move for advantage, but then obviously everyone else gets to sort of hop onto the system that's already there. And so you subscribe to a service, and there's no such thing as bills. You pay however much it is for the service. Yeah, actually, I guess, again, I mean, something like something like,

Netflix and you give them your subscription. Do you subscribe to phone, Catherine? I'd love to subscribe to party phone. Find me up in a beautiful wooden box. I'd love it. I'd love it. From 1878, this is a brand new invention, the switchboard. Why is this important? As more and more people get phones,

as more and poor people on the network, then connecting people gets more difficult, more important, more complicated. So switchboards are a way of to a degree automating, you know, the business of kind of taking somebody's end and plugging it into somebody else's socket. Okay, you have been watching the gay hockey show. I was going to say. This is very erotic. Oh, hey, phones.

And telephone girls. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. 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-1840s had typically been young men, and they were typically a pretty raucous crew.

And that kind of telegraph culture didn't really seem to work in 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 gossip. They don't. I'm like, this is a track. What do you don't then?

They just sit there and they're obedience. They do as they're told. They're trusted, which is quite a rare thing in the 19th century for women to be given this level of trust in a commercial operation, actually. Yes, I'm not having serious for once. This is an important new kind of employment for middle class. young women. Yeah, it's huge. Yeah, that this is an independent job,

something that allows degrees of financial independence, and there's, you know, feeds into that kind of late Victorian, wow, technology of the future. I mean, it makes women like that part of that kind of technological culture. And they get a charming nickname. Do you know what the nickname is? Call girls, I want a better name. You're not far off.

That's slightly inappropriate probably. The hello girl. Hello girls! Yeah. I love that. That's from the 1880s. They're the hello girls because they greet you and then they plug you in to whoever you want to talk to. And initially you just say, can you just put my friend Jim on?

And they'd be like, sure. And then obviously after a while there's too many gyms and then they have to start asking you for actual details of the number. But yeah. Do they start asking for a phone number or do they start asking for a house address? What do they start asking? It's more a connection to a number, I suppose, isn't it? So at the very beginning, you would literally. call up the operator and say, I'd like to talk to Mr. Jones, and since there'd be only one Mr. Jones

there, then that'd be a relatively straightforward. As the phone proliferates, then you start getting people using addresses, you know, connect me to 45 Edgeware Terrace or wherever. And then you would end up with, you know, something like a contemporary situation where, you're asking for a specific number. Connect me to, you know, London, one, two, three. And the spread of The phone's 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 1882. There's a telephone for every 200 people in Chicago, which is amazing. In London, it's every 3,000 people. And obviously, it spreads much slower in the rural regions, much slower in the countryside. I think the UK or England gets sort of fairly early on, but Europe's quite slow to pick up the phone. But it's interesting is that you still get these shared party lines, but you also get businesses putting phones into the banks, into hotels. So people might use the phone. You might pop up. into a bank to use a phone. So they become quite important the phone quite early on. And by 1902 there are 81,000 pay phones in the USA, which is a lot of pay phones.

How many? 81,000 pay phones. Wow. 1902, I mean, within a quarter of a century of the invention of the thing, they're everywhere. Now, I said the hello girls, which obviously is a charming thing. Do you know where the word hello comes from? No. No.

So it's the official telephone greeting. Okay. And it's not the one that Alexander Graham Bell wanted. Okay. Do you know what he wanted? No. I said at the beginning of the show. Ahoi, hoi.

Yeah. Are you joking? He wanted, what if you're in a bad mood? A hoi hoihoi. I'm very angry. No, what are you talking about? Yeah, he wanted a hoihoi. And what was hello?

His reaction when he heard he didn't get it? Hell. Oh. That's great. Thank you. That's really good. So where did hello come from? You're a hoi-hoi-hoi.

What's a weird, rich boy. I'm like, well... You and why do we say hello on the telephone? Because it's one of the most popular words on the planet, which is remarkable because it's quite a newish word. It's a newish word. I mean, like a hoi-hoi. It's distinct, hello.

Yeah. It's a word that hopefully is going to kind of cut through. It's Thomas Edison's idea, if I remember actually. It's Edison who suggests that hello would... certainly be better than a hoi-hoi as a form of greeting when you're communicating. But they're both hailing words, aren't they? A hoi-ho is what you say to a sailor when you're hailing them. Yeah, it feels very both.

And in America, hello was a hailing word. Hello! Yes. So they're communicating at a distance. Yeah, because it carries. If you were shouting across a field, hello would carry. But in the UK, hello was 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 are you doing here? So it was a word that existed already. Just sort of to mask your disappointment at seeing a local on your one bloody holiday. Addie Bohart gets everywhere. It took us eight days on the boat. It appears, hello, hello. I like it.

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 hoi-hoi instead? No. Orichie song.

Ahoi-hoi, is it me you're looking for? Just so many. I just can't bear to think how many boat shoes we'd have to be wearing. I just think, I'm very glad it's not. Okay. I just think the Hoy-hoi-hoes doesn't quite take the same. I can imagine the Wonderbrii advert in the 90s. A hoi-hoi boys.

I mean, just so much we could do with it. Come on. I'm going to bring it back. I'm bringing it back. A hoi-hoi magazine. So we've talked about the Hello Girls and the fact that they were trusted with employment. this is a really important thing. There is a gender shift here as well.

And you've also got this notion of managerial roles. There's a woman called Catherine Schmidt who introduces training methods to make sure that women have good diction in her area. So there's really interesting things happening there. There are social anxieties as well about Hello Girls working in these jobs. People are concerned about their safety, but also their function or their performance. Yes. They're young single women.

They're going to be routinely as part of their job. in contact with men, are men going to flirt with them? Are men going to be inappropriate? Are men going to try to chat them up? Yes, absolutely they will. Yes, there are limited hours. But they finish working relatively late,

so concerns about unaccompanied young women walking home late at night, things like that. Love that the solution then, as it is now, is like, maybe the women should stay home rather than the men not being awful. Yes. Yes, great. It's fair as old as time.

Yes, isn't it? There's also some fun stuff about them growing their hair or combing their hair over their ears or something. Concerns about women, their hair's too long. They can't hear properly. Stuff like that. Wow. I'd love to be surprised that men didn't know anything about women's bodies, but that also remains constant. 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 are 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. because it was so busy. There could be fears that telephones would invade domestic privacy. And of course, casual telephone speech, little idle chit-chat, would destroy face-to-face manners and etiquette.

So which of these complaints, worries, concerns, was not a Victorian anxiety about the phone? They all seem like pretty Victorian anxieties. Perhaps I'm inclined towards pyjama? Is that maybe? What's your thinking behind that? The pajamas are the sitting-down one. They just seem even more.

parody of themselves, but they all seem like they'd be worried about it. 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 wildly inappropriate. They should stand to speak to a woman. Oh, for goodness.

And the pyjamas thing, too. What, if they weren't wearing trousers on the phone? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. No, the one that 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. this, Catherine.

Well, 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. I mean, you and actually, the operators, they had the power to just end a call, right? They could say, sorry, someone needs the line. Yes. They could indeed.

Oh, like our dads in the 90s. That's enough now I need the telephone. I mean, they're always there. Yes, I mean, there are a limited number of lines. If you're banging on for too long, then... Yes, the operator might well say. Sorry, your time's up. Somebody else needs to talk to the prime minister now.

Can they hear you? Yes. They can hear every conversation? I believe so. The operators would be able to hear what was happening, right? Yes, pretty much. Yeah. I mean, they can break in.

When you're using a pay phone, for example, you pay for a certain amount of time. Your two minutes is up. Do you want to put more money in? So they would interject into your conversation. Just going back to those anxieties, Just very quickly. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it?

We once again have a lot of anxieties about the phone, about etiquette, about how it's changing young people, et cetera, et cetera. It's interesting how new technologies scare us. Oh, yeah, we always have panic, don't we? It's always like, and the panic is always that we will reveal our true selves to be ourselves. It's always like, what if we behave? Like, we probably will. And you're like, well, I don't know that it's a symptom more other than a call.

Like, which one is it? Yeah. But also they could be speaking privately without being policed by society. They might actually have the opportunity to relax or to be intimate without being observed. And in France, the great fear is that women are having literally oral sex on the phone. That is the big number one concern is that women will cheat on their husbands on the phone. As if that just started in France. That's a peak French concern.

I love that. By the Edwardian area, by the early 1900s, Yuan, is it the novelty of the phone wearing off or is it an exponential uptake? I would say it's quite an exponential uptake. but it becomes more and more normal to have a phone. Well, I mean, if you're a middle class, upper-middle-class household, predominantly initially in London, then in other large cities, then gradually the phone networks kind of spread out. I mean, you'd have telephone exchanges in towns.

Yeah. So it's then the case that more and more of the country are getting hooked up through telephone networks. But the 1920s, 40% of American houses had a telephone, which is remarkable in 1920s. You know, this is really, really kind of widespread. The UK is slightly further behind, but the lines were nationalised in the UK in 1912, so just before the First World War. And is that an important decision? Yes, I mean, it's, well, it's as with the nationalisation of the Telegraph, a generation or so earlier,

a recognition to a large extent that this was an nationalisation. it that couldn't really be trusted to private enterprise, that this mattered sufficiently to be a matter of governmental control, governmental oversight. Remember. 1912, wait, so who's in government who's doing all this nationalisation? Well, I definitely know this off the top of my head. It's just right there.

It's Askwith with the Liberal government. But it's a really important question. And you're right. And funny how you reacted. I did exactly the same. My brain immediately went, why are we letting all the tech billionaires run everything? if one.

Yeah. But, you know, that's where we are now. Anyway, I mean, we've done a huge amount of history there, Catherine. Only 25 years, really, we've crammed it in, but actually a huge story. Is there anything particularly that surprised you or stood out? I guess that it, from invention to the ubiquity of its use is such a short period of time, that there aren't any major hiccups, it seems like, that it kind of seems to go quite smoothly. It's functioned.

There isn't, it doesn't seem like it became impossible at a certain distance. it seemed to just grow exponentially. I think the other thing I find shocking is, yeah, I guess the presumption of nationalisation is still like, oh gosh. But I think it's also, I had never really thought of it as a part of the feminist movement or of like, you know, empowering women. But I guess it makes total sense that it was a space through which they acquired employment. Yeah.

And good employment. They unionised quite quickly. They got higher wages quite quickly. It's one of those rare jobs in history where like everyone went, we do need this. We'll have to pay these women, unfortunately. Wow. Am I getting excited for 1912? Yeah, exactly. Nostalgia, phone nostalgia.

Imagine there. The nuance 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. Well, Professor Yuan tells us something we need to know about the history of the early telephone. My stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Professor Morris. We've been talking about the telephone, invented in 1876.

I want to tell you about another invention that took 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 gov any second now. This was the telectroscope. The telegraphoscope essentially was going to be telephone with vision. So you get wonderful cartoons in punch of mater and pater, 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 80s, throughout the 90s, it's always just about to be invented. And obviously,

It never 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, because they were starting to think about the future and understand the future, basically the way that we do. It's that destination we're going to get to with big tech, with technology, things like the telephone.

And a teleoscope was the next big thing on their horizon. That was going to be the technological future. Amazing. Thank you so much. Two minutes on the spot. I mean, fantastic. They basically invented Zoom. All I could think about, as you were talking, was The Simpsons. In the future, they always had televisions that you could see each other on. And that was like a hundred years later in the 90s of us being like, get real. But like, yeah, that's so interesting.

Never happened. Yeah, it's very steampunk, isn't it? There's a real aesthetic to that. Yeah. But, I mean, again, I mean, you're imagining the people in the past thought about the future, the way we do. Yeah. And they didn't really. No.

I mean, not before the 19th century. How do we know that? What do you mean? Well, because what does Isaac Newton think the future is going to hold? Isaac Newton thinks the future is going to hold Armageddon. Yeah. That's it. I mean, in between Newton and Armageddon, things are going to pretty much be.

You get stories where people going to the moon saying the 17th century. They go to the moon in chariots. Yeah. Pulled by geese. Drawn by geese or swans or whatever. Yeah, but I... Nobody thinks you can do that. Yeah.

These are utopian tales. The moon is utopian. The Victorians invent the future that we think of as a future as a concept. It's really interesting. We'll do an episode on it one day because it's really good stuff. Okay. Because my brain is immediately going, well, no, the people who wrote things down imagine the future, as you're telling me they imagined it. But there's loads of people didn't get to.

No, that's fair. It's fair. We'll do it one day. Interesting. Yes. Sorry. It's all right. So what do you know now?

It's time to what do you know now. This is our quick fire quiz for Catherine to see how much she has remembered today. You have been jotting down now. Yes, will they help me? Got ten questions for you. Okay. We've covered a lot of history, so let's see how you go. So, question one, what form of electrical long-distance communication predated the telephone?

The telegraph. Very good. Question two, which inventor submitted his patent caveat on the same day as Alexander Graham Bell? Gray. It was, Elisha Gray. Well done. Question three, what did Bell say to his assistant, Thomas Watson, in the very first telephone call? Mr. Watson, I want you.

Come here, I want you. I'm here. I need you. I must have you. Come on, Watson. It's our time. Question four. What did Bell propose should be the standard telephone greeting. Hoy, hoi, ho. Yes. Crazy. Bring it back. Question five. How did Bell spend his honeymoon with his wife, Mabel?

Making her promo his new product in the UK. Yeah, absolutely. With a surprise twist of getting to meet the queen. What a drag. A honeymoon for all to enjoy. Question six. What invention allowed telephone users to talk to eat? other rather than just the central office. As in, do you mean like the switchboard?

The switchboard is correct. Absolutely. Well done. Question seven. What nickname was given to the women who operated the telephone exchanges in America after the 1880s? Hello, girl. Hello boys. Question eight, name one common technical problem that beset early telephone users. Crossed wires. It's a real thing. Yeah, real thing. And noise interference and surveillance people listening in. Yes, of course. The party line. That still befalls them if they're on a bus with me. Let me tell you that. Question nine, can you name two examples of these social anxieties that critics had about the telephone and its use? They were very worried about poor people calling rich people to moan about the state of affairs, which they should have been wary of. And they were also concerned about men sishing down or possibly wearing a pyjamb as well.

They speak to women on the telephone. Good, serious concerns, I think. Yes, real things. This for a perfect 10 out of 10. I haven't referred to my notes yet, by the way. I'm very proud of myself. In what year was the telephone system nationalised in Britain? Oh, 1912.

Oh, she's done it. Amazing. So casual. I told you I'm good at short-term retention, regurgitation, and then immediately forgetting it because I went to a very, very intense school. Do I know any of it now? No. Trauma learning.

Amazing, Catherine. Well done. And thank you so much, Professor Ewan. That was a lovely history lesson there. I think we all learned plenty about the telephone. And listener, if you want more from Catherine, of course, she's done many episodes with us, including a fan favourite, Gronia O'Malley, Irish Pirate Queen,

and of course the history of general elections, which was very interesting too. For more electrical history from Professor Yuan, there's our episode on Vital Electricity with Olga Cock that was surprisingly violent. It's quite a lot of sort of electricity torture and people being shocked horribly. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds in the UK to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else.

If you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you're get your podcasts. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the incredible Professor Yuan Morris from the University of Aberystwyth. Thank you, Yuan. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. It has. We've had a lot of fun. And in Comedy Corner, we had the brilliant Catherine Bowhart. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you for having me. Am I allowed to plug my futuristic special that's on the internet? Yeah, go for it. How exciting. I just put my most recent show on YouTube and it's called Again With Feelings. And if you like a nosy, Hello, girl. Then I'm very much that.

And I'm gabbing some gossip. Perfect. There we go. Go watch it. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we search through the phone book for another neglected historical topic. But for now, I'm off to go and make a hoi-hoi, the official greeting for podcast. Come on. Never. Bye. You're Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4.

This episode was researched by Rosalind Sklar and Catherine Russell. It was written by Rosalinds-Murzolm, Dr. Emory Rose Price Goodfellow, Dr. Eminigus and me. The audio producer was Steve Hanke. and our production coordinator was Jill Huggott. It was produced by Dr. Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer, Dr. Eminoghose, and our executive editor was Philip Sellers. Hello, I'm Nick Robinson.

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