America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940The telephone looms large in our lives, as ever present in modern societies as cars and television. Claude Fischer presents the first social history of this vital but little-studied technology—how we encountered, tested, and ultimately embraced it with enthusiasm. Using telephone ads, oral histories, telephone industry correspondence, and statistical data, Fischer's work is a colorful exploration of how, when, and why Americans started communicating in this radically new manner. Studying three California communities, Fischer uncovers how the telephone became integrated into the private worlds and community activities of average Americans in the first decades of this century. Women were especially avid in their use, a phenomenon which the industry first vigorously discouraged and then later wholeheartedly promoted. Again and again Fischer finds that the telephone supported a wide-ranging network of social relations and played a crucial role in community life, especially for women, from organizing children's relationships and church activities to alleviating the loneliness and boredom of rural life. Deftly written and meticulously researched, America Calling adds an important new chapter to the social history of our nation and illuminates a fundamental aspect of cultural modernism that is integral to contemporary life. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994. The telephone looms large in our lives, as ever present in modern societies as cars and television. Claude Fischer presents the first social history of this vital but little-studied technology—how we encountered, tested, and ultimately embraced it with en |
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activities adult advertising Alexander Graham Bell American analysis Antioch Antioch Ledger Appendix AT&T AT&THA auto automobile Bell Canada Bell System Bell Telephone Bell's blue-collar blue-collar workers Census century Chapter claimed competition consumer conversations costs cultural customers device directories early electricity estimates Etiquette example exchange families farmers Field Research Corporation friends historians households in-town included income increased independents interviewees largely living Logit long-distance Lynd Marin County Middletown Minitel modern newspapers out-of-town Palo Alto party lines percent percentage perhaps PT&T rates regression reported residential telephones residents role rural telephony sample San Francisco San Rafael social Statistics subscribers suggests switchboard tele telegraph telephone and automobile telephone companies telephone diffusion telephone industry telephone numbers telephone service telephone subscription telephone system telephone's Theodore Vail three towns tion TPCM U.S. Bureau urban users Vail white-collar women workers
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Page 2 - The telephone is essentially democratic; it carries the voice of the child and the grown-up with equal speed and directness.... It is not only the implement of the individual, but it fulfills the needs of all the people.
Page 2 - In the development of the telephone system, the subscriber is the dominant factor. His ever—growing requirements inspire invention, lead to endless scientific research, and make necessary vast improvements and extensions.
Page 3 - I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles; just how, though, I could hardly guess.