The historic Pacific Bell building at 333 Grant Ave.
Chris Stewart/The Chronicle 1999The last Portalstold the story of the halting, sometimes-comical birthof San Francisco’s telephone industry. The city’s first telephone was installed in 1876, when an experimental line was rigged up between Meiggs’ Wharf, off North Beach, and the Merchants’ Exchange Building in the Financial District. In 1880, the city’s first two telephone companies merged, becoming the Pacific Bell Telephone Co. This first iteration of Pac Bell was not exactly a paragon of customer service: It employed teenage boys as switchboard operators, but it was forced to fire them because they were so rude to the customers. This would not be the last of the young industry’s growing pains.
一个t first, the city’s few telephones were simply connected by wires strung from boards nailed to roofs. But as the city grew denser, this chaotic system became impractical, and in 1880 the first telephone poles were erected. However, an only-in-San-Francisco problem arose, as detailed in a 1927 book published by Pacific Bell Telephone, “An Historical Review of the San Francisco Exchange.” Because most of the city’s streets still consisted of basalt blocks set in sand, wind-blown sand would accumulate on the phone wires, which were made sticky by the city’s omnipresent fog. The lines would cross and get stuck together, creating electrical interference that would only disappear at noon, after the sun had risen and evaporated the “troublesome mixture.” The problem was solved by wrapping the wires.
In 1883, the first long distance phone line was completed, linking San Francisco with San Jose. Soon lines were completed to Oakland, Hayward, Benicia, Niles Canyon, Sacramento, Santa Cruz and other points. But maintaining these “long lines” was challenging, not least because the only way repair teams could locate a break in the line was by testing it at a close distance with a small electric generator called a magneto connected to a bell: the closer to the break, the louder the bell rang. “Whenever some defect developed in a toll line, a man was started by horse and buggy from San Francisco with orders to keep going until he found it,” the “Review” writes. “Later a regular system of patrols was inaugurated to maintain these rambling pathways of wire. A patrol consisted of a lineman and his helper. They made their rounds in a wagon carrying all essential materials, and reported their location daily to San Francisco by wire.”
Men not only had to repair connections to the long lines but reset poles, install instruments and local switchboards, build branch lines, do general troubleshooting and map everything they did. There were three main patrols that started from San Francisco: one that covered the north, one that went to San Jose, and one that went to Stockton. This last patrol was the longest: It took four months to complete a round trip. These long-lines nomads patrolled the state for more than 20 years, retiring only in 1906.
到了1890年代,switchbo的主要技术进步ards, transmitters and batteries had greatly improved telephone service. But according to the “Review,” despite this progress, “the instrument was looked upon by the general public as more or less of a plaything.” To grow their business, phone company executives embarked on two innovative campaigns. Their first move, in 1894, was to introduce four- and 10-party lines, which were much cheaper than a single line. This gambit succeeded, attracting 1,300 new subscribers in 1895 and 1,400 in 1896. But what really paid off was one of the odder and more creative marketing schemes in the annals of San Francisco business: the 1896 “kitchen telephone plan.”
Realizing that “many people were reluctant to pay out an appreciable amount of money for what they regarded as a luxury and plaything … the company proposed to install for the small charge of fifty cents an instrument which was to be known as a kitchen telephone. It was to provide one way service only, and as the name indicates it was intended primarily for the use of the housewife in ordering supplies.” The campaign’s target housewife could use her kitchen telephone to call any line in the city. But the kitchen telephone had two serious drawbacks: It could not receive calls, and it was a party line shared with at least 20 others, meaning it was busy most of the time.
But the kitchen telephone’s shortcomings were part of Pacific Telephone’s master marketing plan. “The company officials reasoned that once a customer possessed a kitchen telephone and had learned to appreciate the value of one-way service, she would begin to desire the greater convenience and satisfaction of two-way service,” the Review writes. Then, “After the subscriber had enjoyed a two-way line for a while, it was believed that she would again grow impatient at finding the line always busy when she wanted to use it, and would therefore prefer to invest a dollar or so more each month for the privileges of a ten-party line. After that the step would be short to a full two-way, single party line at the regular rates.”
This early “get-’em-hooked” campaign succeeded in a big way. Full-service phone customers increased from 7,810 on Jan. 1, 1897, to more than 11,000 a year later.
By 1905, 50,000 telephones were in use among San Francisco’s population of 400,000. The 1906 catastrophe destroyed most of the phone company’s buildings and lines, but it quickly rebuilt, restored service, and expanded exponentially. Timothy Pflueger’s magnificent 1925 Pacific Telephone Building, built on the site of a company office destroyed by the fire and topped by eight great gray eagles, is a monument to a revolutionary industry that had overcome its fledgling days and was in full flight.
Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco.” His most recent book is “Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City.” All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier Portals of the Past, go to sfchronicle.com/portals.
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