Ancestry Magazine

It’s 1825 and our ancestors in America are enjoying some relaxing family time on a summer evening. The pre-teens don’t have personal DVD players. The teenagers aren’t grooving to their iPods. Mom isn’t chattering on the phone. Dad isn’t staring at the television. And absolutely no one is surfing the Web.

If our ancestors lived in town, there were newspapers and neighbors to tell them the news of the day. Out in the country, where most people lived, a person could be born, go to school, get married, start a family, and never meet anyone who had ever lived outside of that county. The pace was slower; information moved more slowly. But before you decide that your family’s life was boring, you should know that they had access to many sources of news, entertainment, and information.

Today, we are bathed in information—car radio, satellite radio, podcasts, blogs, e-mail, browsers, high-definition TV: they all bombard us with information. We have handheld computers, iPods, laptops, huge computer monitors, and surround sound. It takes a conscious effort to remember that there was a time when it wasn’t like this.

In 1930, radio was new enough that census forms included a question about whether there was one in the household. Just thirty years later, a nationally connected media helped spread information about Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. The news prompted riots in sixty American cities—acts that, until that time, were limited to local events.

But what about your ancestors—how did they stay informed? Here’s a chronological list of communication milestones and how each helped advance the delivery of news, messages, entertainment, and the way our ancestors communicated with one another.

In 1520, ships in Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage around the world communicated by firing cannons and raising flags.

In 1844, a telegraph message was sent between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.: “What hath God wrought.” Incidentally, this may still be the most frequently used message today. Or not. Maybe it’s more like, “Omigod! What did u do?”

In 1849, the Associated Press started a Pony Express to speed European news to New York. In Newfoundland.

In 1858, the world got a bit smaller. The Atlantic cable allowed the sending of telegraphic messages between the United States and Europe. It was hailed as a breakthrough, but only worked for a few days. Since 1866, the service has been much better.

Bell invented the telephone in 1876, and people started to get phone bills in 1877. To make a call, you just talked to an operator and a connection was made. An entire new set of manners was created—how to answer the phone, how to announce a call, how to politely tell Aunt Thelma that you couldn’t stand to hold the phone to your ear for another minute. I’m hoping that manners for cell phones are invented before I leave this mortal coil.

It wasn’t until 1892 that the very first automatic exchange phone service—sans operator intervention—began. It started as a tapping system in which each number had to be tapped out on a series of three keys by the caller; four years later, the system switched to dials. The dial phone required two things—light to see the numbers and time to wait for the dial to return to its original position. Problems arose if you didn’t have one or the other of these. First, you couldn’t tell what you were dialing if it was dark. As a child, I’d try dialing in the dark or with my eyes closed, imagining how a blind person would use a phone to make a call, and it took me a long time to get it right. Second, you had to wait for the silly dial to spin back before you could dial the next “digit.” If you dialed digits too quickly, the call would not go through, or it would go to the wrong number. There was no such thing as automatic re-dial—if you got a busy signal or no answer, you’d have to start dialing again at the beginning. Plus, it was another sixty years or so before you could get anything other than a plain, utilitarian telephone—by the time they arrived in the stores, fashion-conscious green, blue, and pink phones looked super modern.

In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi transmitted radio signals from Cornwall to Newfoundland. Radio was quickly adopted for maritime use and saved thousands of lives. It wasn’t used for news and entertainment until later, after private receivers were more universally adopted by consumers.

In the 1910s, pay phone booths started becoming very common. Girls of certain occupations would place paper bills bearing their phone numbers on the walls of the booth—hence the term “call girls.” The joy of stuffing a phone booth wasn’t realized until the 1950s (if you don’t know what it means to stuff a phone booth, go ask your mom). The booths started to disappear in the 1970s, replaced by non-enclosed pay phones, which are cheaper to fix after they’re vandalized.

In 1925, the first television signal was transmitted, although television didn’t find a foothold in the American home until the 1950s. I remember watching cartoons in our living room in about 1958. I also remember my father running into the room telling me never to sing a song from a beer commercial again. Even more, I remember jingles from radio and television ads for Houston-area car dealers and the local power company—they both contained addresses and phone numbers that don’t work anymore.

In 1949, RCA developed the 45-rpm record. The next thing you know, 45s and rock ‘n roll were taking off. You could buy a record for a dollar when I was a kid and make your parents mad playing the Beatles.

In 1956, Marvin Middlemark invented rabbit ears. This flawed invention requires constant adjustment even today, and, in my opinion, just isn’t worth messing with. The 1950s also saw the introduction of the remote control. This freed many children from the experience of being called in from another room to change the channel for their parents.

In 1961, touch-tone telephone service was introduced. I can remember not having one in the mid 1970s. Today, no one dials—very helpful for kids who have phone numbers with several digits above seven. Back in the 1960s, you couldn’t be popular if your phone number was 498-9099. It took too long to dial it. You might beg your parents for a phone number like your friend Connie’s, but they wouldn’t understand the importance.

It was another thirty years before Caller ID was implemented nationally, and at least eight years after that before people quit answering calls they didn’t recognize. Can you imagine answering a phone now without knowing who is calling?

When I was young, postage stamps were three cents and letters were the most common form of long distance communication. Calling across the country—particularly during daylight hours—was cost prohibitive. Now, postage costs thirteen times more, long distance phone calls are virtually free, and e-mail and text messages are our preferred forms of communication. It’s just a matter of time before we all forget the barriers to communication our ancestors faced.

Beau Sharbrough is a noted speaker and writer on genealogy and technology. He can be reached via www.rootsworks.com.