美国国家公共电台 NPR--Remembering America's first social network: the landline telephone

Remembering America's first social network: the landline telephone

Transcript¹

As Peter Amstein squeezes through a warren of equipment racks draped with wire and crammed² with whirring machines, he offers a cheerful warning.

"There are exposed electrical terminals, probably nothing will kill you," he says. "But there are definitely some things that will give you a fairly unpleasant zap, so do be a little cautious about what you touch."

Amstein works in Seattle's tech industry, but in his spare time he's a lead volunteer, tour guide and board president of the group that runs the Connections Museum.

This is a place where self-described technology nerds such as Amstein are preserving and restoring machines that ran America's first landline telephone network.

It's a Willy Wonka's factory of clattering⁴ gizmos, many invented by steam age eccentrics and tinkerers who managed to connect an entire world.

"This is a high tech startup story, only it's 120 years old now," Amstein says.

These days Americans often connect to other humans through machines and computers, everything from texting to dating apps to Zoom⁵.

It's easy to forget how we got here, how the phone system formed our first social network and how its design still shapes how we talk today.

"So much of the stuff that I built my whole [tech] career on comes out of the telephone system, out of the early developments," Amstein says.

A voice on a wire, a network connecting a world

Starting in the 1870s, a group of inventors including Alexander Graham Bell figured out how to translate human voices into electrical signals and shoot them across wires.

It turns out that was sort of the easy part. Once you figure out how to help people talk over long distances, you have to come up with a network that can link a globe of chatterboxes.

The first step was human operators, usually women, who served sort of as the first software running the system.

"Should I gender⁶ stereotype⁷ you and ask you to be the telephone operator?" Amstein says, inviting⁸ a woman visitor to sit at the museum's antique switchboard.

Once she's ready, he coaches her how to make connections one cable at a time. "Number please?" she asks, plugging in the cable and causing the phone to ring promptly⁹.

At first, the technology allowing women to run the network was improvised¹⁰ from stuff inventors found lying around, often as simple as musical chimes or bells.

For the first generation of payphones, for example, women operators listened to musical notes rung by different-sized coins as they were dropped into the slot.

"She could hear it," Amstein says. "The microphone was here [in the phone box], and she could hear the sound of the bells."

Clever but super slow. Not practical if you want to connect thousands, then hundreds of thousands of people.

Tinkerers find ways to automate¹¹ a growing system

Inventors then started coming up with steam age machines that could also listen and make connections much faster.

Amstein demonstrates one of the earliest, most durable¹² devices, known as a Strowger switch, invented in the late 1800s by an undertaker in Kansas City, Mo. "When I pick up the phone here, one of these machines springs into action," he says.

The device whirrs to life, sounding sort of like a drummer tapping out a beat on a cymbal¹³. As Amstein dials a rotary¹⁴ phone, the Strowger switch registers little blips of sound, counts them and makes connections with amazing accuracy.

Designs for automatic switches got faster and became more reliable, connecting America for more than a century. Then in the late 1990s, computers came in and machines like this were junked almost overnight.

"It's a beautiful machine"

Amstein shows off one of the prizes of the museum's collection, a panel switch system that fills whole corridors of equipment racks.

"This is the last of its kind anywhere, the only working panel switch anywhere on the planet," he says.

Picture giant looms¹⁵ with cables shuttling up and down linking phone lines.

They found this machine mothballed and abandoned in a phone company storage room. One of the volunteers, Sarah Autumn, spent months splicing¹⁶ it back together again.

"It wasn't easy," she says. "It took me about a year just poking¹⁷ at it before I could even begin to understand it in any real depth."

Like Amstein, Autumn works in Seattle's tech industry.

Asked why she spent hundreds of hours of her spare time bringing this device back to life, she talks about it not like a broken appliance, but like a work of art.

"I fell in love with it because it's a beautiful machine," Autumn says. "Folks who worked on these systems were highly skilled and highly trained at understanding this complex web of interrelationships."

The people working here say there's graceful¹⁸ engineering woven into a lot of these machines, important ideas that were almost lost.

The technology feels ancient. But in the rumble¹⁹ and clatter³ of these old machines, you can glimpse a piece of how America got to where we are now — an age of smart phones, TikTok and AI.

1 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

2 crammed   

adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式)

参考例句：

• He crammed eight people into his car. 他往他的车里硬塞进八个人。
• All the shelves were crammed with books. 所有的架子上都堆满了书。

3 clatter   

v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声

参考例句：

• The dishes and bowls slid together with a clatter.碟子碗碰得丁丁当当的。
• Don't clatter your knives and forks.别把刀叉碰得咔哒响。

4 clattering   

发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• Typewriters keep clattering away. 打字机在不停地嗒嗒作响。
• The typewriter was clattering away. 打字机啪嗒啪嗒地响着。

5 zoom   

n.急速上升；v.突然扩大，急速上升

参考例句：

• The airplane's zoom carried it above the clouds.飞机的陡直上升使它飞到云层之上。
• I live near an airport and the zoom of passing planes can be heard night and day.我住在一个飞机场附近，昼夜都能听到飞机飞过的嗡嗡声。

6 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

7 stereotype   

n.固定的形象，陈规，老套，旧框框

参考例句：

• He's my stereotype of a schoolteacher.他是我心目中的典型教师。
• There's always been a stereotype about successful businessmen.人们对于成功商人一直都有一种固定印象。

8 inviting   

adj.诱人的，引人注目的

参考例句：

• An inviting smell of coffee wafted into the room.一股诱人的咖啡香味飘进了房间。
• The kitchen smelled warm and inviting and blessedly familiar.这间厨房的味道温暖诱人，使人感到亲切温馨。

9 promptly   

adv.及时地，敏捷地

参考例句：

• He paid the money back promptly.他立即还了钱。
• She promptly seized the opportunity his absence gave her.她立即抓住了因他不在场给她创造的机会。

10 improvised   

a.即席而作的,即兴的

参考例句：

• He improvised a song about the football team's victory. 他即席创作了一首足球队胜利之歌。
• We improvised a tent out of two blankets and some long poles. 我们用两条毛毯和几根长竿搭成一个临时帐蓬。

11 automate   

v.自动化；使自动化

参考例句：

• Many banks have begun to automate.许多银行已开始采用自动化技术。
• To automate the control process of the lathes has become very easy today.使机床的控制过程自动化现已变得很容易了。

12 durable   

adj.持久的，耐久的

参考例句：

• This raincoat is made of very durable material.这件雨衣是用非常耐用的料子做的。
• They frequently require more major durable purchases.他们经常需要购买耐用消费品。

13 cymbal   

n.铙钹

参考例句：

• The piece ends with a cymbal crash.这支曲子以铙钹的撞击声结束。
• Cymbal is a pair of round brass plates.铙钹是一对黄铜圆盘。

14 rotary   

adj.(运动等)旋转的；轮转的；转动的

参考例句：

• The central unit is a rotary drum.核心设备是一个旋转的滚筒。
• A rotary table helps to optimize the beam incidence angle.一张旋转的桌子有助于将光线影响之方式角最佳化。

15 looms   

n.织布机( loom的名词复数 )v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的第三人称单数 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近

参考例句：

• All were busily engaged,men at their ploughs,women at their looms. 大家都很忙，男的耕田，女的织布。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The factory has twenty-five looms. 那家工厂有25台织布机。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 splicing   

n.编接（绳）；插接；捻接；叠接v.绞接( splice的现在分词 )；捻接（两段绳子）；胶接；粘接（胶片、磁带等）

参考例句：

• An ultra_low _loss splicing without conventional power monitoring could be achieved. 焊接最低损耗在非常规能源运作下将可能做到。 来自互联网
• Film, tissue backing. For splicing, holding in shoe and general purpose use. 具有薄膜、棉纸基材，适用于铭版、皮革及一般性双面贴合。 来自互联网

17 poking   

n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢

参考例句：

• He was poking at the rubbish with his stick. 他正用手杖拨动垃圾。
• He spent his weekends poking around dusty old bookshops. 他周末都泡在布满尘埃的旧书店里。

18 graceful   

adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的

参考例句：

• His movements on the parallel bars were very graceful.他的双杠动作可帅了!
• The ballet dancer is so graceful.芭蕾舞演员的姿态是如此的优美。

19 rumble   

n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说

参考例句：

• I hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.我听到远处雷声隆隆。
• We could tell from the rumble of the thunder that rain was coming.我们根据雷的轰隆声可断定，天要下雨了。