Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (32 page)

BLOODHOUNDS.
The bloodhound’s unrivaled sense of smell has made it one of the most popular hunting dogs in history. Dog experts believe it dates back several hundred years B.C. and was first used as a hunting dog in and around Constantinople. Its skills were so valuable that it became known as a royal, or “blooded,” hound and was a favorite pet of aristocrats.

PEKINGESE.
Came from imperial China, where the purest breeds were reserved for members of the royal family. The dogs were so precious that when British troops sacked the Imperial Palace in 1860, most of the pets were destroyed by their owners...who preferred killing them to surrendering them to the enemy. However one woman—the Emperor’s aunt—committed suicide before she killed her dogs, and the British found five of them hiding behind a curtain in her quarters. The dogs were brought back to England, and one was presented to Queen Victoria. She fell in love with it, and the breed immediately became popular.

The busiest pay phone in the U.S.—used over 270 times a day—is in Chicago’s main bus terminal.

Odds & ends of telephone trivia and lore, from the fabulous Bathroom Reader library.

O
RIGIN OF THE PHONE NUMBER

“The early phone exchanges listed only the names of ‘subscribers’ to the service, and the operators had to memorize all of them in order to connect one to the other. The idea of a telephone number was vigorously resisted by customers as an indignity and loss of personal identification. However, during an epidemic of measles in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1880, a respected physician named Dr. Parker recommended the use of numbers because he feared paralysis of the town’s telephone system if the four operators succumbed. He felt numbers would make it easier for substitute operators to be trained. Surprisingly, no one complained...and the new system proved so practical that by 1895, official instructions to operators specified, ‘Number Please?’ as the proper response to a customer.”

—The Telephone Book
, by H. M. Boettinger

MESSAGE FROM A VISIONARY

The following was sent in a letter to “the organizers of the New Electric Telephone Company” by Alexander Graham Bell on March 25, 1878
. “At the present time we have a perfect network of gas pipes and water pipes throughout our large cities. We have main pipes laid under the streets [connected to] various dwellings, enabling people to draw their supplies of gas and water from a common source.

“In a similar manner it is conceivable that cables of telephone wires could be laid under ground, or suspended overhead, communicating by branch wires with private dwellings, counting houses, shops, manufactories, etc., uniting them through the main cable with a central office where the wire could be connected as desired, establishing direct communication between any two places in the city. Such a plan as this, though impracticable at the present moment, will, I firmly believe, be the outcome of the introduction of the telephone to the public...I [also] believe that in the future, wires will unite the head offices of telephone companies in different cities, and a man in one part of the country may communicate by word of mouth with another in a distant place.”

Richest charity in the U.S.: the Y.M.C.A., with $2.4 billion in revenue.

THE PRESIDENT AND THE TELEPHONE

“After the invention of the telephone in 1876, one might think that the president...would be one of the first persons to have one of the new instruments. Actually, a telephone
was
installed in the White House in 1877, during the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes. But that doesn’t mean that the president had a phone. The phone was not even in his office, and it was used mainly by staff members and news reporters.

“Until 1898 chief executives rarely used the telephone, and none had an instrument in his office. When the president wanted to make a phone call, he had to leave his desk and go down the hall to the phone, just like everyone else. That changed abruptly in 1898 when war broke out with Spain. With action on two fronts, in Cuba and the Philippines, the president was suddenly faced with the need for more rapid communications than could be effected by the old methods.

“Accordingly, [a technician] was brought to the White House to install a communications center...[which] provided President Mckinley with private telephone lines to the War and Navy departments...There was also a direct line to Tampa, Florida, the primary staging area for the invasion of Cuba.” That was the first time the telephone was deemed absolutely essential at 1600 Pennsylvanian Avenue.

—The Telephone and Its Several Inventors
, by Lewis Coe

EARLY TELEPHONE ETIQUETTE

“The subscriber has the right to expect the first word from the operator to be always ‘Number?’ to which the word ‘Please’ had better be added, but is not absolutely required.

“The subscriber has the right to expect the operator, if necessary, to say, ‘That line is busy’; simply ‘Busy’ won’t do.

“The operator has a right to expect that the subscriber will have the number ready when the operator answers, and that the operator will not be compelled to wait while the subscriber looks it up in the directory.

Michael Jackson was awarded his first gold record when he was 11 years old.

“Also that the subscriber will give the number in a a clear and distinct voice, and if the operator misunderstands a number, that she will be corrected, without evidence of anger in the tone of the subscriber”

—Telephone Etiquette
, published in 1905

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

• “New York City’s first phone directory was issued in 1878. It was a small card with a printed list of 271 names. Almost a century later, 44 of the businesses listed in that first directory were still in operation, four of them at the very same address.”

• Early rural telephone wires were strung across just about anything that was standing—not only telephone poles, but windmills, silos, and even fence posts. In fact, it was fairly common for phone conversations to sputter and die out as a result of cattle rubbing against the fence lines.”

• “Back in 1909, when 18,000 calls were placed daily between New York and Chicago (earning Bell $22,000, seven times a week), a special long distance salon was opened in Manhattan. To entice Paying customers and get them into the ‘long-distance habit,] the New York Telephone company sent taxis to pick them up and bring them to the salon, whereupon they were escorted over oriental carpets to a gilded booth draped with silk curtains.”

—The What to While You’re Holding
the Phone Book
, by Gary Owens

THE BIRTH OF THE PAY PHONE

“It started at home, where families subscribed to telephone service and paid a monthly bill to lease the company’s instrument. This phone was off-limits to nonsubscribers, however. And early on, there were plenty of these. How, then, to summon the doctor? The police? The fire department? What would happen if a phoneless neighbor used another’s phone? Who paid? How? How much? And what if it was three in the morning?

“With problems ranging from bookkeeping to friend keeping, it was essential that telephones be made accessible to all. Thus the first public pay station in the world went into service on June 1, 1880, in the office of the Connecticut Telephone Company in New Haven....For ten cents, paid to a uniformed attendant, anyone could talk to anyone.

Survey results: 31% of American women say they wear only comfortable shoes.

“Soon, however, the coin-operated telephone was invented by William Gray. According to legend, Mr. Gray had been turned away by cold-hearted neighbors when he sought to use their telephone to call a doctor during a family emergency. Determined not to let it happen again—to himself or other ‘phoneless people’—he patented and built ‘the first coin-controlled apparatus for telephones.’ It was installed in the Hartford Bank in 1889.”

—
Once Upon a Telephone
,
by Ellen Stern and Emily Gwathmey

LEARNING TO DEAL WITH THE TELEPHONE

1917:
“Another hall abomination is a telephone. Unless we want our guests to know the price of their roast, or the family to listen aghast while we tell a white lie for society’s sake, or the cook to hear us asking for a new one’s references, don’t put your telephone in the hall closet it, or keep it upstairs, where the family alone are the bored ‘listeners in.’”

—Interior Decoration for Modern
Needs
, by Agnes Foster Wright

1927:
“...Then the telephone. Children usually love to use it ad they should be taught to speak courteously on the pain of not being allowed to answer it. Children commit all sorts of discourtesies over the telephone if not checked and one often hears the casual ‘Yep’ and ‘What?’ and ‘Wait.’”

—Good Manners for Children
,
by Elsie C. Mead and Theordora Mead Abel

The 1940s:
“When you have finished your telephone visit, and courteously said ‘good-bye’ or ‘thank You,’ replace the receiver gently. Slamming the receiver might cause a sharp crack in the ear often person with whom you have been talking. Since you would not ‘slam the door’ after an actual visit, be just as careful in closing you telephone door.

—
You and Your Telephone
,
distributed by the New York Telephone Company

The state song of Florida is “Old Folks at Home.”

SOUNDS PHONY

“When the Bell system introduced push-button phone service, it could hardly have anticipated that the push-button phone would become America’s most popular new musical instrument.

“Each of the buttons produces a different musical tone. If you punch out 33363213, you’ll get a respectable rendition of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”; 005883 plays the first bars of “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony”; and 1199009 gives you “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” It’s unwise to try it, however, unless you call a friend first for the recital, because otherwise you might find yourself inadvertently serenading someone expensively by long distance.”

—
The What to Do While You’re Holding
the Phone Book
, by Gary Owens

THE HISTORY OF “DIAL-A-PRAYER”

“Around 1955 (long before answering machines were available), a number of churches—notably the Hitchcock Memorial Presbyterian church in Scarsdale, New York—began broadcasting brief recorded prayers continuously by phone; after the Hitchcock’s service had been publicized in a local newspaper, there was such a backlog of calls that the Scarsdale telephone system became temporarily jammed. By 1956 so many Dial-A-Prayer services were being offered by churches around the nation that
Time
magazine said they had become ‘almost a characteristic feature of U.S. religion.’

“Later, in the 1960s and 1970s there would be many variations, most of them live rather than recorded: Dial-A-Shoulder, in New York, offering a sympathetic listener to any problem; Medicall in Chicago, offering quick medical consultation for a small fee; Operation Venus in Philadelphia, a free venereal-disease information service; Hot Line in Los Angeles, offering advice on personal problems to teenagers; and Dial-A-Joke, in New York, designed to make callers laugh at a recorded routine by a professional comedian.

“Today, these seem routine...but at the time they were a revolution—a whole new way to use the telephone.”

—Telephone: The First Hundred
Years
, by John Brooks

On average, baby blue whales gain 200 pounds a day.

“Dr. Who” was the longest running sci-fi show in television history, and one of the longest running dramatic programs. Here’s the story of how the good Doctor came to be.

B
ACKGROUND.
Before “Dr. Who” debuted, there had never been a family-oriented science fiction show in Britain. There had been a few radio shows, but on TV they’d all been strictly adult or strictly for children. There was no precedent for “Dr. Who.” No one had any idea it would become an overnight success. But it did—literally.

How It Started.
It was 1962. The BBC was expanding its line of TV programs and wanted to offer a new Saturday evening family show that would be educational as well as entertaining. They called in two people—Sydney Newman (creator of “The Avengers”) and Donald Wilson (later creator of “The Forsythe Saga”) to come up with it. Newman wanted to make the program science fiction. Wilson wanted history. So they compromised and came up with a time traveler.

OK. Now what was he going to travel in? They wanted 1) a space ship that didn’t look like a space ship and 2) something cheap. It was originally planned for the device to have “chameleon circuits” that would enable it to blend in with its surroundings (in Greece it would like a column, in a field it would like a rock, etc.) Since the first story took place in London, the time machine started off looking like a telephone booth. An immediate problem: the budget didn’t allow them to keep changing it. So the time machine remained a telephone booth.

“Dr. Who” was an immediate sensation. For six years the writers got away without saying anything specific about the doctor’s origin. There were vague hints that he was fleeing from something, but that was it. Finally the producers needed an explanation. So they finally “revealed” that Dr. Who was a time lord from the planet Gallifrey.

INSIDE FACTS

In The Beginning.
H.G. Wells’
The Time Machine
was the source that inspired Sydney Newman, “Dr.Who’s” co-creator, to come up with his time-traveler.

Most experts believe Jack the Ripper was left-handed.

Bad Timing.
The first episode of “Dr. Who” was aired in England on Nov. 23, 1963, the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Because of the assassination, the BBC figured a lot of people had missed the first show (good guess), so the following week they showed the first episode again, right before the second one.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea.
The original idea behind “Dr. Who” was serious. By having contemporary characters travel back in time and witness important historical events, the show could make the past seem alive to its young audience. Ratings of the historical episodes were poor, while the fantastic adventures in outer space attracted huge numbers of viewers.