Telephones were almost commonplace in 1905 Santa Rosa, with an average of about one phone for every ten residents. But that rapid expansion came at the cost of personal service; no longer could you ring the operator and ask for a connection to John Smith — now you had to use your “Hello Book” (what a great name for something as mundane as a telephone directory!) to first lookup his “number.”

It may seem a small thing today, but it was a bit of a milestone in the history of the way we use technology, being probably the first time that an individual was associated with such an abstract thing as a series of numbers.

HELLO BOOKS HAVE BEEN DISTRIBUTED

PATRONS ARE ASKED TO GIVE “NUMBERS” WHEN CALLING FOR “PARTIES”
Good Business is Now Assured — Growth of the Business in This District is Big

The new telephone directories have arrived and are being issued. This is indeed a comfort.

Santa Rosa now has 800 subscribers to the Sunset Telephone & Telegraph Company and the very latest “central” equipments, and patrons are now assured good service. This, however, is on condition that the parties cooperate to make the service what it should be. With the 800 phones in use it is impossible for “central” to do good work or give any kind of service unless the “numbers” are called for instead of individuals. When only a few phones are used and one or two operators are employed to mention the name may be sufficient, but in such large offices to get a subscriber it is necessary for the party calling up to give the number wanted.

The “Sunset” now has 2,086 phones in Sonoma county, and about 3,000 in this district, which comprises Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake counties. There are 223,539 phones on the Pacific Coast, any of which may be connected with a Santa Rosa subscriber on short notice. Conversations were had last night from here to San Diego, Fresno, Portland and Vancouver, B. C., and in each instance the conversation was carried on almost as well as if the persons were living in Santa Rosa.

There are 2,086 phones in use in Sonoma county divided as follows: Santa Rosa, 800; Petaluma, 700; Healdsburg, 310; Sonoma, 64; Sebastopol, 64; Windsor, 42; Forestville, 26, scattering, 80.

Sebastopol has just had thirty-six phones added and Green Valley has contracts for 200. Next Tuesday subscribers here and at Sebastopol will have a special 15-cent rate as is the case to several of the county towns.

– Press Democrat, July 30, 1905

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Although there were fewer than eight hundred telephones in all of Santa Rosa in early 1905, the phone company was already pressing customers to signup for upgraded services at a higher price. Also: the latest model phones are prettier, and so tiny! Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.

INCREASE FOR PHONE SERVICE
Small Raise in Price for New Four Party Lines – Contracts Now Being Made

Harry Kahn of San Francisco, contract agent of the Sunet [sic] Telephone and Telegraph Company, is in the City of the Roses for an indefinite stay. His business here is to explain to subscribers of the company the benefits to be derived from the change of the local system from ten party lines to four party lines. The company will increase the cost to subscribers for the four party lines to $1.50 per month for residences and $2 per month for business houses.

[..]

One particular feature which will recommend itself is that in case of complaints on a four party line they are easier rectified, and damages to the line are more easily repaired. Then with the smaller number of persons using the line there will be fewer responses of “Line busy” from the operator at central, and a consequent decrease of the ill humor and profanity which the subscribers are wont to use.

[..]

Manager Nephi L. Jones believes that the new phones will be here within possibly thirty days, and the work of installing them will be begun as soon as they arrive. They will be more ornamental than the ones now in use, and only about half as large…

– Santa Rosa Republican, January 9, 1905

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This has the feel of an overheard barbershop boast, with enthusiastic Mr. Apostolides proclaiming that he has a respected doctor as his “good Greek student,” along with the loan of a fantastic machine that records his voice.

The graphophone was the first major advancement over Edison’s primitive phonograph, invented and developed in the 1880s by Charles Sumner Tainter, an associate of Alexander Graham Bell. (The name “graphophone” was coined as a joke transposition of the word “phonograph,” according to Bell family lore.) The investors in their company, however, thought the future of sound recording lay in recording business correspondence, not music, and research concentrated on making a portable machine that recorded on wax cylinders. With improvements, the same technology would continue to be used by Dictaphone until the 1940s. The full history of Tainter’s graphophone — including the precautions taken to prevent his technology from being stolen by Edison’s spies — is told here.

Although the sound quality was lousy and the volume barely audible, wax cylinder recordings by musical performers such as John Philip Sousa’s Marine Band and “artistic whistler” John Yorke Atlee were favorites; an 1891 survey found one out of three phonographs and graphophones were being used for entertainment. In 1889, entrepeneur Louis T. Glass invented the jukebox using a modified graphophone that would only play after a nickel was inserted (and yes, the slug was apparently invented shortly thereafter). Only a single cylinder was available to be played, and patrons had to stand close to the machine, listening through one of four attached stethoscope-like hearing devices. The nickel-in-the-slot graphophone players continued to be popular through the turn of the century; a jukebox model was available as late as 1898, cost $20.00.^*

^*Jukeboxes: An American Social History by Kerry Segrave, 2002, pp. 5-8

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