Dad b’y, get with the times!

By Bill Bowman

“Mr. Watson, come here I want to see you.”

Those nine simple words were, allegedly, the first ever uttered over a telephone wire. The now famous phrase was spoken March 10, 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell to his partner, Thomas Watson, who was in another room, on the receiving end, of the world’s first telephone call. The breakthrough came a few days after the Scottish born scientist, engineer and inventor had been granted a patent for his brand-new invention, the telephone. The device would revolutionize human communication, as we know it.

Bell had been influenced by Samuel Morse, who had invented the telegraph, more than 30 years earlier, another device which had accelerated long distance communication by transmitting electrical signals over wires between stations.

More than a century before the cell phone came into widespread use and popularity, Graham Bell had also invented its forerunner, a wireless telephone that transmitted sound and conversations. Patented in 1880, Bell himself called the photophone his greatest invention, even greater than the telephone itself. Unfortunately, its use proved to be limited, given the technology of the day. It wasn’t until the 20th century heralded fibre-optic technology that transmission of sound by light came into widespread application.

The first sounds from a ringing telephone also came 10 years after the first successful Transatlantic cable had been landed at Heart’s Content, Trinity Bay, in July 1866, onboard the Great Eastern, from Valencia, in the southwest of County Kerry, Ireland. American financier Cyrus Field was the driving force behind that venture.

The Heart’s Content Cable Station Museum, which commemorates that historic event, is a gem in our province and country. That is why it was so encouraging and exciting to learn recently the site is, apparently, edging closer to recognition by UNESCO, as a World Heritage Site. If and, hopefully, when it comes to pass, it will be long overdue, and a well deserved tourism boost for the historic Trinity Bay town and region.

The first rings from Bell’s telephone were also heard a quarter of a century before Guglielmo Marconi received the first wireless message at Signal Hill, St. John’s, on Dec. 12, 1901, a faint three-dot sequence in Morse Code, the letter S. The message had been sent all the way across the Atlantic Ocean from Cornwall, England.

In case you haven’t already guessed, although I’ve never worked in telecommunications, I happen to have strong personal connections to that field, something I inherited naturally and honestly. My late father, Bill Sr., and my uncle, Edward (Ned) Bowman, worked in that field throughout their entire working lives. Uncle Ned also repaired radios, televisions and small appliances in his spare time until his untimely death in 1974 at 54 years. My father worked for over 37 years with the United Towns Electric Co., as a hot linesman, and later Avalon, Newfoundland Telephone, and NewTel Communications.

One of their first jobs, in the mid-late 1940s, before Confederation, was to be part of a work crew who electrified parts of the Trinity South Shore, installing the first electric lights in communities like Green’s Harbour, Heart’s Delight and Islington.

My grandfather, John Bowman, had also worked with United Towns, especially around the electrical generating stations (power houses) at Victoria and Hearts Content. 

My sister and first cousin were switchboard operators, in the 1950s, at the old Telephone Office on Water Street, Carbonear, until it closed in 1961, along with switchboard offices in Harbour Grace, Bay Roberts and other locations, shut by the changeover to the automatic dialing system, which my father helped install for Avalon Telephone.

Built in 1929, the historic Telephone Office is currently the home of DarkStar Coffee Shop.

It may surprise and intrigue you to learn that Graham Bell, whose great genius had been behind the invention of the telephone, actually refused to have a phone installed in his own study, out of concern it would distract him from his scientific work.

Now there was a guy well ahead of his time, in more ways than one. Imagine if Bell could come back today, stroll through the mall and encounter a group of teens, all heads bowed reverently into their wonderful smartphones, thumbs flying silently at the speed of light, as the world passes them by.

It’s only fairly recently I finally broke down and acquired a cellphone, out of pure practicality and necessity, certainly not pleasure. That and the kind, tender and encouraging words of our adult children, who kept saying: “Dad b’y, get with the times!”