All images are from the 1961 Baylor University Round-Up.
According to these pictures from over a half century ago, folks have always had a love affair with phones. All that was available at the time was the black, corded rotary kind, like the one we had in our dining room for years.
I still have nightmares, where I’m calling someone on a rotary phone, and I have to start over again, or the rotary won’t work right.
I remember waiting for hours for my friends’ numbers to stop giving me the busy signal, so that I could update them with the latest dish. Sometimes, I’d just give up altogether. There was no voice mail, and you had to get through to the line in order to leave a message on the answering machine.
We couldn’t walk around the house, either, so we were tethered to the base. And the cords would inevitably get wonky in their coil. You remember janky, improperly-coiled cords? I guess that still happens to office phones.
By the way, did anyone ever clean their receivers? These days, I Lysol-Wipe our phones regularly. I guess those were the days before antibacterial soaps and hand sanitizer.
The university even had a Cotton Bowl float devoted entirely to the phone!
So don’t let anyone tell you we haven’t always loved our phones, even before they were smart!
I Don't Get It 