Does everybody in this country dial a number on a mobile, & if so, do they ever dial a calculator or a keyboard?
Do Americans dial numbers on a cell phone or do they punch them? To judge by this kind of advice Teach Your Child How to Dial 911 they dial too, even on a keypad.
It is always intriguing to look at how words change their meanings & associations over time – fascinating little mini-history lessons which sometimes bring surprises.
The original dial did not move at all – it was a sundial for telling the time, & (of course) it was the sun (or its shadow) which went round to do the job.
The OED finds the first recorded use of the word dial in connection with the telephone in US Patent 222, 458 from 1879 ‘each station comprises ... a dial instrument ... to make intermittent breaks in the electric current, the number and character of which are successively indicated on a dial’.
This was obviously a time of rapid spread & development on both sides of the Atlantic – many eminent Victorians make their first comments about this ‘wretched new craze’ about this time – only a decade after the first Atlantic cable was established. Who says that we are the first to live in such a fast-moving technological age?
But it took a long time for the telephone & its dial to become familiar to all – even in 1931 the satirical magazine Punch referred to ‘Those who think they can understand dialling but can't’ & American secretarial schools produced special training materials.
Even in the 1970s in England you might have to introduce new recruits to the office into the niceties & courtesies of dialling the phone (only just over 40% of households had a phone at home). Would that today’s phone users had mobile manners drummed into them so firmly.
Link
Privateline.com Telephone History: Page 5: 1892 to 1913
Related posts
Mixed blessings
Lady Frederick Cavendish: Some quotations
Political communicators
