Very odd table - thoughts?

Wonder if this is the one in the museum? Adjoining photos on her photostream seem to show other museum objects with same tag format
https://www.flickr.com/photos/27072829@N00/3062787853/lightbox/

 

Spring, I don't think that's the one in the Museum of London - I did find a photo of that one, and it's in a glass case. There's a fair few private telecoms and theatre museums here, it might be one of those.

Here's the MoL one: http://www.samhallas.co.uk/museums/london.htm

davey, apparently BT named it as an iconic object! Have a look here: http://www.connected-earth.com/Jour...ons/Livinginthewirelessage/Wireless/index.htm

Neat.

 

I suspect London also. From the following article this phenomenon didn't occur in the U.S. because we were too preoccupied with the radio. Seems the newspapers in Britain did all they could to keep public radio broadcast from happening because of the fear of revenue lost.

"By the end of the first year, Electrophone had forty seven customers. One reason for its success was the slow recognition of the broadcast potential of radio in Britain. Although U.S. inventors were experimenting with public broadcasting, no such experiments seem to have taken place in Britain at this point. Marconi's work on radio was still exploring the military and shipping communications possibilities, rather than public broadcasting. Some experimental broadcasts to ships at sea had been tried but interest died out with the start of World War 1.

"Electrophone subscribers had increased to around 600 by 1908 and the company covered performances from some 30 churches and theatres.

"During the war, recuperating servicemen were given free access to Electrophone, and so many people became aware of the the potential of the system. In the U.S., however, this interest was directed to radio broadcasting rather than the telephone lines. In 1922 Western Electric opened its radio station WEAF in New York, and made time on the station available to customers for a fee. Thus the evil of advertising came to broadcasting. It worked, though, and the writing was on the wall for Electrophone.

"In Britain resistance to broadcasting was especially high from the newspapers who saw their position and advertising revenue being challenged. Against them were the companies who could see a lucrative market in radio transmitters and receivers , including the powerful Marconi and GEC companies....."

http://www.telephonecollecting.org/Bobs phones/Pages/Essays/Electrophone.htm

--- Susan

 

Wow! It is a telephone table, but a very special one! It could go over $1000 maybe! WTG Spring!

 

I think it was more about geography and money in some ways. London had a decent telecoms network and also a nigh monopoly on good theatre - and money, of course. So, being in a relatively small area, the homes and clubs of those with the money to do so could easily be connected. it was innovative and almost certainly a major status symbol for those who could afford it. Don't forget this thing started in 1896, well before any inkling of broadcast radio.

2LO - the precursor of the BBC - started to broadcast in 1922, at around the same time period as US and European stations. That would have killed it off.

 

Part of the story which may remain unwritten is how the fully-loaded units were turned into domestic furniture. Perhaps some enterprising merchant bought the returned tables from the phone company, sold the headsets for scrap metal, had someone make up the little knobs to fill the screw-holes in the sides of the tables, then sold them to furniture stores. Someone please go off and find that chapter.

 

Hi Davey,
That is what I did in the early 40s. Once in a while I would get signals from Brazil mostly from Pittsburgh. It seemed the crystal radio would also get Ham operators signals from all over. It seemed magical that I would be lying in bed hearing people from far off places. I would be under the featherbed hearing the trees branches breaking from the cold and frost with no light but a tiny voice crackling. God yes, it was magic and wonderful.
greg

 

First public radio broadcast in the U.S. was in 1910. It was a live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House. My mother used to tell how her brother made a radio by wrapping copper wire around something. He had seen a diagram of a homemade one in some magazine in the late teens to early 1920s. It had a single headphone/earphone. They would get into a quiet part of the house, sit on the floor with their heads close together, and listen on that one earphone. Mom said the reception was terrible, but they were thrilled to hear voices, news, through that earphone. They both were only adolescents. A few years later they listened to the progress of Lindberg's flight across the Atlantic, or more accurately the news that no one knew for sure if he was still flying, and were the first in their small town to hear the news that Lindberg had landed in Paris.

That uncle was a very interesting man with many wonderful stories. He became a chemist and patent attorney for American Cyamide heading up their patent department. He got his undergraduate, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Clark University in Worcester, MA. He was attending Clark at the same time Dr. Robert Goddard (the rocket scientist, physicist, inventor, engineer) was doing his liquid fluid rocket tests there. He knew Goddard on the student to professor level, and witnessed some of Goddard's rocket launches in Auburn, MA.

--- Susan

 

>To have seen his launches was to see the world changing. That's epic stuff.<

It certain was. Listening to the first radios and seeing those rocket tests were right up there with landing on the moon for us. It was thrilling and out of this world stuff. My mother (1912-2003) used to marvel about advances she witnessed in her lifetime: radio, television, computers; phone in every pocket; flight advances; etc... Then she told how her mother (1880-1960) used to say the same thing about her life for she had lived from the horse and buggy days to the automobile, from kerosene lamps to electricity, from the first airplanes to sputnik, first telephones, the many kitchen inventions, etc... Today we are blasé about it all.

--- Susan