Lots of interesting stuff to be found on the Internet Archive. For example, there’s a 1927 AT&T training movie on how to use the new phones that had just come out with dials. It’s a silent movie, of course. For more about the Internet Archive, I strongly recommend this great talk by Brewster Kahle, its founder.
Update: Ironically, coming back 18 years later to update some of the links, I had to use the Internet Archive to find things again… including the AT&T movie, which was still on their site but not under quite the same URL!
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What an interesting movie clip!
While I was watching it, first I got that creepy feeling I get when I am looking at really old things. I had a hard time dealing with the fact that everyone who was involved with making that movie probably passed away long before I was born.
Then, I was thinking that it wasn’t that long ago that rotary phones were still pretty wide spread. The technology lasted 50+ years. That’s quite impressive. I don’t think you will be able to say that about a lot of gadgets that are being invented today.
Finally, I started wondering what current piece of technology will suffer the same fate in 70 or 80 years. Will there be a guy looking at some old footage of a 2005 Porsche, and shake his head in disbelief that such expensive and classy machinery could use such a nasty means of operating, then hop in his personal spacecraft and spend the weekend on the Moon.
All that while I am busy pushing up dasies. 🙂