The Telephone

The telephone in the thirties was a new invention. Mr. R. Cunningham recalls his childhood in Glasgow and his parents installing their new communication device.

                        

“In the early thirties a cousin of my father persuaded him to install a telephone in our house. Being a senior technician in the telephone department of the Post Office, the cousin had the installation carried out quickly. My parents decided it should go in the dinning room – the least used public room – and it was stood on a two-tier table beside the fireplace, with the directory on the lower shelf and an armchair beside it.

 The instrument had a long stem and a large mouthpiece at its head and the receiver set in the cradle just below, with a long cord to let it reach the ear. We children and the housemaid were taught how to answer it and, if we had to call someone else to the phone, not to put the receiving back in its cradle but to lay it on the table. “