THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603290607
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Since the telephone will be observing its 120th anniversary this year, it might be a good idea to highlight the occasion by dredging up some of the trivia, local and otherwise, connected with an invention that many lovers of privacy still regard with mixed feelings.
Ogden Nash, the witty American poet, was one of these. Long after the telephone had become an American business and household fixture - or nuisance - he observed: ``Someone invented the telephone and interrupted the Nation's slumbers, Ringing wrong, but similar numbers.''
To get back on the historical track, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the Pandora's box of chit-chat, made the first telephone call on March 10, 1876. On that memorable - or regrettable - day, Bell scared the bejabbers out of his laboratory assistant when he buzzed him over the first telephone he had patented three days earlier and requested, ``Come here Watson. I want you.''
Since then an ever-increasing Niagara of words has continued to flow over the wires, much of it important, but a good deal of it unnecessary. All of which reminds me of the hoary gag describing the three quickest means of communication: ``Telephone, telegraph and tell a woman.'' That was considered great wit when I was still in knee pants, but I'm afraid there are those today who would brand it as politically incorrect.
Bell's newfangled jabber box caught on rapidly and the first commercial telephone exchange, manned by an all male staff, opened in New Haven, Conn., in January 1878. Then - believe it or not - in September of the same year a woman with the appropriate name of Emma Nutt became America's first female ``Hello Central,'' operator at the same place.
Norfolk's first telephone setup, The Norfolk Telephonic Exchange, was established by James D. Tracy, who had come here early in 1879 after helping to found Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co. a few months earlier. Opening the area's first telephone company, with Cyrus Wiley Grandy as its first president, Tracy leased the second and third floors of the Burruss Building at 124 Main St. and proceeded to secure subscribers.
By May 24 of the same year, according to an article in The Norfolk Landmark, Tracy had signed up 73 takers, charging $36 a year for business firms and $25 a year for private installations, both payable in advance.
Meanwhile, the new invention was increasingly being used by American youngsters for mischievous purposes. And when their parents were out of earshot, it became the ``in'' thing to bedevil any likely victim.
Grocers were a favorite target, and the unsuspecting victim would be asked if he stocked loose pickles or cakes. If the answer was in the affirmative, he was immediately urged to ``Round 'em up quick. We'll be around for some.'' Another favorite target was the town's tobacconist. When asked if he had ``Prince Albert in the can,'' and he said yes, he was flippantly instructed to ``Let him out, you old meanie, or we'll call the cops.''
But my personal telephone gag didn't involve any such obvious tricks. Its victim, a portly Berkley matron who spent most of her time on her vine-draped front porch spying on her neighbors, regarded her telephone as a mortal enemy. When its bell summoned her, with me at the other end of the line, she would grab the receiver off the hook and bellow, ``Well!'' into the mouthpiece in such a stentorian tone it could be heard a block away.
I hate to admit how many times I bedeviled that unsuspecting woman during my misspent childhood, but her resounding ``Well!'' still echoes in my mind after three quarters of a century have come and gone.
Questionably amusing as that episode is, however, it is not a patch on Norfolk's best telephone story, dating from around World War I when all home instruments were attached to baseboard plugs with snakelike lines that could easily trip up unwary users. A local telephone operator received a call from an elderly lady with an unusual request.
``My telephone cord is too long,'' she quavered. ``Would you be kind enough to pull it back a little from your end?'' by CNB