Telephone timeline

How have telephones changed over time?

Learning intention

We are learning how telephones and telephone technologies have changed over time.

Success criteria

We can identify and describe historic objects.
We can make inferences on the benefits and challenges of past technologies.

Examine telephones from the past

Examine the telephones. They are arranged from oldest to newest.

Tall telephone with a round mouthpiece on a pole, an earpiece attached by a cord hanging on a cradle on the pole. The telephone is sitting on a timber box and a box with two metal bells on top is beside it.

Candlestick telephone, circa 1910

An old-style phone made from black Bakelite plastic with the earpiece and speaker handle resting on top, attached by a coiled cable. The dial mechanism on the base is a wind-up handle.

Bakelite hand crank telephone , circa 1940

A telephone made from black Bakelite with the earpiece and speaker handle resting on top. The dial mechanism ia round dial with numbers displayed inside the finger holes.

Bakelite rotary dial telephone , circa 1940

A brown plastic telephone with the earpiece and speaker handle resting on top. The dial mechanism is a clear dial with numbers displayed inside the finger holes.

Plastic rotary dial telephone, circa 1970

A yellow plastic telephone with the earpiece and speaker handle resting on top. There are plastic push buttons with black numbers on the base.

Plastic push button telephone, circa 1985

A yellow plastic 1990s wall telephone with the earpiece and speaker handle next to the base, attached by a coiled cable. There a beige plastic push buttons with black numbers on the handle.

Wall-mounted plastic push button telephone, circa 1990

See

What do you notice first?
What is each made from?
What details does each have?
What has changed from oldest to newest?

Think

How do you think each telephone was used?
How would you put in the phone number for each?
How would you start and finish a call for each telephone?

Wonder

What do you wonder about these telephones?

Act out using an old telephone

Work in a small group of students.
Each person takes a turn pretending to use one of the telephones pictured.
The group guesses which telephone is being demonstrated.

Reflection

Which telephones felt the quickest and most efficient to 'use'?
Which telephones required an operator to connect them?

A closer look at a candlestick telephone

Candlestick telephones were made of metal and wood and had 4 separate parts connected together by cords with wires in them. Parts:

mouthpiece and base
earpiece
crank box with crank handle
bell box with bells.

The telephone has a pole like a candlestick. The pole was held to bring the mouthpiece close to the mouth.

The telephone was designed for sitting on its crank box on a table. The bell box was attached to a wall, often close to the floor.

Did you know

Mainly businesses had telephones. They weren't common in people's houses until the mid 1940s to 1950s.

Label a candlestick telephone

Label the parts of a candlestick telephone.
Draw a picture of a person using a candlestick telephone – speaking and listening.

Label a candlestick telephone worksheet

Candlestick telephone on crank box with bell box, circa 1910

Earpiece

Wooden box with open lid. There are coils inside the box and a wiring diagram pasted inside the lid

Crank box with lid open

Round black metal base of a candlestick telephone

Metal base, marked PMG1897, the model number (not the date)

Mouthpiece

Open wooden box wiht two metal round bells on top. The door has a wiring diagram on the open lid.

Bell box with door open

Role play – making a telephone call through an operator

Recall the telephone calls on your visit to the Schoolhouse Museum. Did you notice that the phone calls were connected through an operator?

Telephone calls were first made through manual telephone exchanges. They gradually all became automated and telephone operators were no longer needed.

Two of the last telephone exchanges to be automated were Ryde exchange in 1955 and Enfield in October 1960, the last one in Sydney.

Examine the photo

Examine the photograph of telephone operators. They are wearing headphones and a mouthpiece. The cords have metal jacks. Each hole on the switchboard is a phone number.

View the video to learn more.

Role play

Work in a group of 3.
Pretend to make a phone call through a manual telephone exchange.
Roles:
- Caller
- Telephone exchange operator
- Shop keeper
Swap roles so everyone has a turn at each role.

Reflect and infer

What were the challenges in making telephone through an operator?
What mistakes could the telephone operator make?
What could cause delays when making phone calls this way?

Telephone exchange role play script

Four women sit on chairs facing a large switchboard that has numerouse holes in rows, some with cords coming from them. The women are wearing headphones and their hands hold the cords with jacks at the end.

Telephone operators at North Sydney manual telephone exchange, circa 1930Willoughby City Library. Cropped, copyright free.

The making of information age: Enfield Telephone ExchangeYouTube | Science Museum (3:12min) | Transcript

Compare a rotary dial to push buttons

Rotary dial telephones followed crank handle telephones. They enabled callers to ring the longer telephone numbers of automatic exchanges.

With automatic telephone exchanges, telephone numbers became 6 digits long – 2 letters and 4 numbers, such as JA 2423. The letters were a code for the telephone exchange, for instance JA was Chatswood and FX was Randwick.

Telephones were so new in people's homes in the 1940s, the dial had written instructions:

'Listen before calling. Pull dial around to stop and let go.'

By 1985 telephone numbers were 7 digits long and push-button telephones were invented.

Similar and different

Record the similarities and differences on the Venn diagram.
Why were push button telephones invented?

Use this Venn diagram to record similarities and differences

Round metal dial with numbers shown below the finder holes. On the inside of the dial are letters and instructions.

Bakelite rotary dial telephone dial close-up, circa 1940

A close-up of the beige number buttons on a yellow push button telephone.

Plastic push button telephone keypad close-up, circa 1985

Compare then and now

Recall how people you know use their mobile phones to make phone calls.

How do they put in the number?
How do they start and end a phone call?
How are modern phones similar and different to the ones you saw at the Schoolhouse Museum?

Two people holding mobile phones and touching them with their fingers.

People using modern mobile phones (Public domain)

Vocabulary

Candlestick telephone – a telephone with a mouthpiece on top of a pole and an ear piece that rests in a cradle on the side of the pole

Crank handle telephone – a telephone that has a handle that is wound to connect to an operator

Rotary dial telephone – a telephone with a round dial on the front that has finger-sized holes around the edge of the dial

Push button telephone – a telephone with raised rectangular buttons on the front

Bakelite – the first plastic invented, usually dark brown or black and heavy to hold

Plastic – a synthetic material that is lightweight and durable

Manual telephone exchange – a building where people worked in front of a large switchboard and manually connected telephone calls

Telephone operator – a worker who manually connected telephone calls

Automatic telephone exchange – a building with equipment that could automatically connect phone calls

Banner image – a Bakelite rotary dial telephone, circa 1940

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