An Undertaker Helped Make Phone Calls Connect Without an Operator

In 1892, visitors travelled by special train to La Porte, Indiana, to see telephone calls connect without an operator. An undertaker from Kansas City had helped make it possible. How could a machine make the connection? Follow Almon Strowger’s early keys, a later two-motion selector and the rotary dial to see how a caller’s number became electrical pulses and a physical path through an exchange—and why automatic service still needed people. Watch next: Before Email, Paris Sent Messages Through Underground Tubes    • Before Email, Paris Sent Messages Through ...   Explore The Surprising History of Everyday Things    • The Surprising History of Everyday Things   CHAPTERS 00:00 A special train for a telephone call 00:32 The operator’s job 01:23 Strowger’s keys and the 1891 patent 02:10 La Porte and the work still to do 02:52 Inside a two-motion selector 03:58 How the rotary dial sends pulses 05:06 More than finding one contact 05:40 The people behind automatic switching 05:55 A change that took decades 06:47 A number does physical work SOURCES R. B. Hill, “The Early Years of the Strowger System,” Bell Laboratories Record, March 1953, pp. 95–96. Retrospective account of Strowger and the La Porte opening. https://historyofphonephreaking.org/d... Sebastian Gießmann, Die Verbundenheit der Dinge (2016), pp. 190, 192. Historical research and contemporary newspaper references. https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/13705 Strowger, Automatic telephone-exchange, US447918A (1891): keys and worked call example. https://patents.google.com/patent/US4... Keith, John Erickson and Charles Erickson, Calling device for telephone-exchanges, US597062A (1898): rotary calling mechanism. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5... Automatic telephone-exchange system, US1355983A: switching, ringing, talking circuit and restoration. https://patents.google.com/patent/US1... Science Museum: Goodbye to the hello girls: automating the telephone exchange. https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/obje... Science Museum Group: Strowger switch, 1897–1898; Enfield three-position manual switchboard. Catalogue research; museum photographs are not reproduced. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup... https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup... National Inventors Hall of Fame: Almon Brown Strowger. https://www.invent.org/inductees/almo... IEEE STARS: Electromechanical Telephone-Switching. https://ethw.org/Electromechanical_Te... ARCHIVE CREDITS Telephone and Telegraph (Holmes [Burton] Films, 1946); Long Distance (Audio Productions, 1941); Dial Comes to Town (Prelinger Archives); How to Use the Dial Phone (AT&T, 1927). Later archive footage illustrates telephone work and equipment; it is not footage of the 1892 ceremony. https://archive.org/details/Telephon1946 https://archive.org/details/long_dist... https://archive.org/details/DialComesToT https://publicdomainreview.org/collec... Strowger portrait: unknown author, no later than 1902. Switchboard photographs: Lt. Fox, U.S. Army Signal Corps (1919); unknown photographer, Imperial War Museums Q 109890 (1917), via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Historical scenes include reconstructions alongside archive material and original explanatory animation. Reconstructions are illustrative, not archival photographs. The four-home network and destination 23 are teaching examples; the different generations of equipment are not an exact reconstruction of the 1892 exchange. Thumbnail: generated artwork based on the archival Strowger portrait. What Time Built brand music generated with ElevenLabs Music. Additional underscore and mechanical sound effects authored locally for this episode. What Time Built brings history to life through documentaries and short stories.