In an article in the _Evening Post_ on “Manners Over the Wire,”
the writer says:
Some little thing may reform an age, the adage runs, and so
perhaps the phonograph recording device, which was installed
recently in the Copenhagen telephone exchange to check the
ill-natured remarks of subscribers to central, by convicting
offenders out of their own mouths, may bring about a revolution
in the Danish city’s manners.
Probably one of the first thoughts of the man who invented the
telephone, and knew that he could project sound over distance,
was that now he could tell his stronger neighbor his candid
opinion without risking the dog and a possible thrashing; one
of his second thoughts was to put his new-found power into
practise. And who, after all, should be the object of most of
the exasperated remarks, shading from complaint to embroidered
profanity, but central herself?
This Copenhagen found out, and set herself to remedy. University
professors there who discover another flaw in Dr. Cook’s records
and ring up the rector right away, only to find that the wire
is busy because half a dozen colleagues have similar messages,
must not abuse central; the connection will be switched at once
to the phonograph, which has no feelings and is an unprejudiced
witness in court. Testimony of as a will recorded thus was
recently held valid in Russia; and the notaries will invent
another form: “Appeared before me this day Phonograph No. 123,
said phonograph being turned on, deposed, etc. ... Polonius,
notary; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, witnesses.” Polonius’
advice, “Give thy thoughts no tongue,” holds good, and better
for the Danes than in the times when, in language of to-day, the
party at Elsinore had no ’phone.
(1943)
=Machine versus Purpose=--See PURPOSE DISCERNED.
=Machine Work=--See MONOTONY.
=Machinery, Excess of=--See MASTER HAND LACKING.