Phones and the way we use them have changed considerable over the last half century. This is our personal phone history.

Please try to take your eyes off the adorable baby in the photo below (it's Pat enjoying her dinner) and look at the phone. This is especially important if you are less than 25 years old, as you might not have seen one like this before. One day you may see something similar in a history museum.

This photo was taken in Pat's grandmother's house, where the phone took pride of place in the dining room.

It was a very posh phone: Grandmother had a private line.

The phone in Pat's house was not so posh, as her parents had a party line. Anyone wishing to have a personal phone conversation had to make sure that the neighbours were not listening in.

For naughty children like Pat, a party line had some entertainment value. By holding your breath and not moving, it could be possible to listen to the neighbours' personal calls.

Usually it was just a nuisance because when anyone in the house wanted to make a phone call, they had to wait for the line to be free. Pat's family shared the phone line with two families, who were related. Why they didn't just walk to each other's houses to speak remains a mystery, but then who can truly understand the personal lives of their neighbours.

The phone in Pat's childhood home was particularly archaic because the telephone exchange had not been automated.

This may be hard to believe, but in Pat's part of Nebraska in the 1950s, dial telephones were still part of the future. It is amazing how things have moved on in modern history.

To use the phone, one picked up the receiver and waited for the operator. After a pause (sometimes a long one) a voice (always female) would ask, 'Number please' and you would recite a phone number.

Actually, it was a local call it was often possible to say 'I'd like to speak to Doris Henning please (or whoever)' and the operator would put you through.

If you were making a really personal call, the operator was another challenge, especially at quiet times of the day. Pat's mother was often convinced the operator was listening, and after her caller had answered would say politely but firmly, 'Thank you operator, that will be all.'

Meanwhile, in Tricia's house in South London, there was no phone! And remember, mobile phones had not been invented. This is probably almost impossible for children and young people of today to imagine. It seems more like ancient history than less only 50 years ago.

At this time in the communications history of England, if you wanted to make a phone call, you walked to a phone box.

Tricia recalls that some were a 'push button B' model, but cannot recall how to use these.

In those days, all phone boxes were red. Sometimes a queue of people would form outside, and if you were making a personal call had to make sure the door was firmly shut.

Going to the phone box could be exciting, and Tricia remembers some events in her personal history by reference to phone calls. For example, her cousin went to Australia on a £10 ticket and Tricia talked to her from a phone box just before she went.

Tricia and Pat both remember being taught how to use a phone. Even though we lived in different countries, we both learnt to make emergency calls at Brownie pack meetings.

Tricia remembers playing with home-made phones. These were tin cans connected by string.

When Tricia was a teenager, her parents got a phone in their house.

When it was installed, her parents put a timer and a jar labeled 'phone money' next to the phone. She was expected to pay for the cost of all her phone calls, and took up a paper round so that she could keep in touch with her friends.

Those of you interested in social history may note one big difference and one major similarity with teens of today. The difference: she paid her way. The similarity: she did not consider seeing her friends at school as 'keeping in touch'.

Anyway, back to our history: in Tricia's house, phone calls were only permitted after 6 o'clock. That was because the cost per minute was significantly cheaper outside business hours. As a result, Tricia developed the good habit of doing her homework immediately after school so that she could phone her friends with a clear conscience.

However, talking to a boyfriend was considered too personal, so Tricia still frequented the phone box.   Her social habits had progressed, so she now got dressed up to go to the phone box, and very often her girlfriends came along.  They would stand outside the phone box and make helpful comments while she made the call to the boy friend.

Pat moved up to a dial phone!  It took about a year before her mother adjusted.  During that first year her mother would sit for up to 5 minutes, with an expression of growing impatience before saying 'what is wrong with that operator!' and then remembering that the operator had been replaced with a machine.

Pat did not stick around at home for many years to enjoy the dellights of the new phone exchange. 

She moved to Wales, where she lived in a hostel while studying for O levels and then A levels.  There was a communal pay phone in the hall, but it was almost impossible to get through to Nebraska, even with a generous handful of shillings.  (Decimal money had yet to be introduced.)

Both Pat and Tricia got married in the early 1970s.

In those days there was a waiting list to install telephones in most parts of England. Even if there had not been a waiting list, neither of us could afford a phone.

Pat and her Wonderful Husband eventually bought a house in 1975, and it came with not one, but two phones. If this was not enough luxury, the downstairs phone was a Trim Phone. This was a one piece gadget, with the dial on the bottom. When the Trim Phone was not in use, the dial was out of sight. And when it rang, it didn't have a bell sound, but a trill. It was the height of sophistication, at least in Pat's eyes.

Similarly, Tricia and her Wonderful Husband bought a house with a phone, and thought that her ship had come in as far as communication technology was concerned.

 Over 20 years ago we both moved to the town where we now live.  We met only a few months after Pat moved here, and soon were having long phone conversations.

Both of us had young children and full time jobs, so it was easier to talk on the phone than to meet face to face.

Tricia worked as a teacher.

After we had known each other a few years, Tricia changed jobs during the school year, and by co-incidence became the class teacher for Pat's son, who was then about 9.

For the first month or so, our long phone conversations caused the poor lad huge anxiety, as he was convinced that we were talking about him.  He was finally persuaded that we had more interesting things to talk about.

About 10 years ago, Tricia hurt her back and was told she had to lie down for several weeks, getting up as infrequently as possible.  Only a few weeks prior to this injury, she had been admiring Pat's new cordless phone, so Pat's Wonderful Husband unplugged the phone and took it to Tricia's house!

It might have been a good idea if the cordless phone had stayed at Tricia's for a year or so, because shortly after it was returned Pat's kids almost got into big trouble with the phone.

Pat and Wonderful Husband had decided that the kids were old enough (they were by then older teens) to stay home alone for a weekend.

On return, they confessed to an accident with the cordless phone.  It had disappeared and eventually they resorted to a search that involved one of them going to the nearest phone box and calling home.

The kid at home heard the phone ringing in the kitchen, and tracked it down to inside the  kitchen bin (trash can).

That might not have been too bad, but they had eaten lasagne for dinner, and scraped remains off their plates into the bin and onto the cordless phone!

It did work, but it always felt a bit sticky.

Since then, we both have acquired more modern cordless phones - and both of us have done dire things to them.    (See Honey I Broke the Phone for an example.)

The social history of phones continues to evolve.  Pat was intending to include a photo of the phone box across the road from her house, but when whe crossed the road with her camera, the phone box had disappeared!   We have since noticed that there are only a few phone boxes left in the whole town.  We attribute this to the enormous growth in mobile phones.