53. Telephone
The intimate sound of the voice in our ears
What must it have been like, writing in quiet moments when letters were the only way to communicate across distance? To correspond with someone whose voice we might never have heard? How terrible, the long wait for a piece of paper with handwritten words, guessing at their intonation. And how differently terrible—and yet miraculous—the intimate sound of the voice in our ears, invisible, instantaneous, unmitigated by the deliciousness of waiting or messages thought-out and composed.
Investors were skeptical of Alexander Graham Bell’s vision for a vast network connecting every house in the country. Initially, telephone poles were viewed as urban blight and homeowners were legally exonerated for cutting them down. Each individual telephone needed its own wire, so hundreds of wires could be attached to a pole. The heavens became a scratched-up tangle of dark lines; we could no longer look up from a street and see the open sky.
Mark Twain was among the first Americans to own a telephone, of which he ambivalently said, “The human voice carries entirely too far as it is.” But by the end of the century, there were more telephones than bathtubs in America, and Thomas Edison said the telephone “annihilated time and space, and brought the human family in closer touch.”
Did Edison foresee what it might mean for time and space to be annihilated, how waiting might become abnormal and silence become suspicious when distance and time—our old obstacles and our protection—were known and measured entirely anew?
Special thanks to Peter Wallace for suggesting the telephone.
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This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 words on 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary. Through December 31, 2026.
I’m looking for ideas for this series — have something you’d like me to consider for inclusion? Please feel free to leave a comment!
oh my gawd THE TELEPHONE. I have this exact phone I took off my grandparent's wall when I sold the house. I just couldn't leave it behind. All those memories of being a kid and listening in on the party line. I kept the phone number for years and just paid the bill not being able to discard it. 592-3132. When I finally cancelled it, the southwestern bell lady on the other end and I both had a little cry about it. Seriously, we both cried. Her for her own memories of letting go.
..."how waiting may become abnormal"...that's my focus today. Thank you for this. I still remember talking to the operator, the mother of a friend of mine, and getting caught up on all that was going on!