This morning an article published by the New York Times came across my wire, the contents of which I had to share. The Times has had a penchant of late for writing about all things phone and this one does not disappoint. Motivated perhaps by the recent milestone birthday of the modern day phone call, the article muses about today’s quickly changing standards for how people use – or more specifically don’t – use the phone for voice-to-voice communication.
The article is filled with truisms and gentle reminders of yesteryear, but it was these two paragraphs that caught my attention most. Unimaginable today, in so many ways….:
“When the telephone first appeared, there were all kinds of etiquette issues over whom to call and who should answer and how,” Dr. Fischer, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told me when finally reached by phone. Among the upper classes, for example, it was thought that the butler should answer calls. For a long time, inviting a person to dinner by telephone was beyond the pale; later, the rules softened and it was O.K. to call to ask someone to lunch.
Telephones were first sold exclusively for business purposes and only later as a kind of practical device for the home. Husbands could phone wives when traveling on business, and wives could order their groceries delivered. Almost immediately, however, people began using the telephone for social interactions. “The phone companies tried to stop that for about 30 years because it was considered improper usage,” Dr. Fischer said.
