In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

226 ARRAYS
how much pleasure and encouragement you can get from weekly telephone
talks with Mother and Dad." Clearly, the implied readers of this
text are college students from wealthy families for whom long-distance
calls are no longer a sensational innovation but not yet a normal habit.
The mother's ear is the object of desire through which the Pacific Telephone
and Telegraph Company tries to attract students' attention. And
even less exciting telephone routines, such as finding out the rates for
long-distance calls, will put them in contact with the ear and voice of a
woman, who embodies the role of operator: "If your hometown is not
listed, the Long-Distance Operator will be glad to give you the rates."
Such conversations with the operator are about to become a privilege of
long-distance customers. In Berlin, a direct-dial system is inaugurated on
August 15-and the Vossische Zeitung offers its readers meticulous instructions
for using it: "How do you get connected? The 'face' of the
new apparatus has points like a clock, going from 1 to o. The dial
rotates, and each number is associated with a hole. You put your finger
into the appropriate hole and pull the dial around until your finger is
stopped by a bar" (Chronik, 141).
In Thomas Mann's story "Unordnung und fruhes Leid" ("Disorder
and Early Sorrow"), though it takes place in the days prior to direct
dialing, Professor Cornelius' children enjoy the telephone as a favorite
toy. Not only do they find it natural to invite friends to a dance party by
telephone, but they also use this technology in order to play practical
jokes. The telephone allows them to be present and absent at the same
time, by making their bodies invisible and their voices infinitely transportable:
"They place calls to every corner of the world. Claiming to be
shopgirls or the Duke and Duchess of Mannsteufel, they ring up opera
singers, state officials, and church lords, and are persuaded only with
difficulty that they have dialed the wrong number" (495). As pleasant as
such tricks may be for the Cornelius children, their parents would not
pay the considerable base fees for telephone service if it were simply for
such amusements. The expense can be justified only because the telephone
is used for more serious things and, above all, because it is a status
symbol: "Many people had to give up their telephones the last time the
fees were raised, but so far the Corneliuses have been able to keep theirs,
just as they have kept their large house, which was built before the war,
by dint of the salary Cornelius draws as professor of history-a million
marks."