TIME MACHINE

"Number Please"

Dial telephone service arrived in Pocomoke City in the early 1960's as I recall. Prior to that time all local calls were operator assisted. You'd pick up the telephone and wait for the operator to come on the line. "Number please" she'd say, and you'd give her the phone number you wanted to reach such as "187R" (that was our home phone number). If the line was busy she'd tell you, otherwise you'd hear the online ring.

The local phone numbers consisted of three numbers or three numbers and a letter (some phone numbers may have been two digits in earlier times as was true in Salisbury; a late relative who grew up in Salisbury once told me "It is said that I as a small child, I used to ask the operator for my daddy, and she would ring 60").

The local operators in Pocomoke worked at the phone office located on the second floor of a building at the northeast corner of Willow Street and Clarke Avenue. You could also pay your telephone bill there. As a youngster I remember going up the steep flight of stairs once and seeing the operators with their headsets on patching cords into their switchboards as calls were being placed. Pocomoke, I believe, was the last Eastern Shore of Maryland area to get dial telephone service.

In New York City the first change over from operator assisted calls to dial service began in the early 1920's. The following are excerpts from a 1922 New York Times article:

AUTOMATIC PHONES SOON TO WORK HERE

Ten Years Will Be Required To Replace 1,000,000 Instruments- Girls Still Retained

The New York Telephone Company has begun installing automatic machinery that will cause each user of the telephone to be his own operator, at the Pennsylvania Exchange in downtown Manhatten, at Academy in upper Manhattan, and at the Walker Exchange in Brooklyn.

An increased number of "information" operators will be necessary, it is expected, for some months at least, until the public is broken in to punching its telephone calls in a manner which resembles working the combination of a safe.

It takes some time for the public to learn the use of the automatic devise, which requires a number of separate manipulations by the person seeking a number. The process is described as follows by the telephone company. "Having secured the desired telephone number from the directory, which we will assume to be Pennsylvania 5280, the subscriber will first remove the receiver and listen for the 'dial tone,' which indicates when the apparatus is ready to receive his call. He will then insert his finger in the hole over the letter 'P,' rotate the dial, rotate the finger until it comes in contact with the metal stop, and release the dial, which will automatically return to normal. He will then repeat the operation for the letters 'E' and 'N,' and in turn for the four numerals 5-2-8-0." When the subscriber has performed these operations the complicated device at central does the rest.

While no telephone girls will lose their positions because of the introduction of automatic machinery, the force eventually will be reduced, but not so rapidly as the girls leave the service to get married or take other jobs.