What is it with geeks and phones? I dunno, but I had it, at least a little. We weren't quite phone phreaks, but we tapped phones and took them apart and generally got up to stuff with them. By "we" I mean me and the boy next door, who was a little older and more technically proficient. (His dad was some kind of engineer at a TV station...which was infinitely cooler than my dad, who was just a boring old doctor).

Tinkering with phones was especially appealing because it was totally illegal. Until 1974, AT&T had a US monopoly on all things telephone. Bell owned the wiring in your house and every phone plugged into it, for which you paid a small monthly rental fee (which explains why phones came in a fabulous array of two or three body styles and three or four colors). You were forbidden to tamper with any part of it.

How did that happen?

AT&T invented the concept of the public utility, way back in the Way Back times, arguing that more than one company draping wires all over everything would be a mess (an argument the cable companies used almost a century later). Instead, they proposed a "natural monopoly": a service that is provided by a private company (them) but regulated by the government to protect consumer interests. The government went for it, but always had a scratchy, grouchy, litigious relationship with Bell. It came to a head in 1974, when the US Justice Department brought a major antitrust suit against AT&T. Between 1974 and 1982, when they agreed to the devolution of Ma Bell into separate regional Bellicles, the actual legal status of phone service was a bit gray. Puzzled consumers milled about talking into cigarette packs and sesame rolls.

Okay, not really, but it was pretty confusing. The central issue was that AT&T overcharged for long distance, and other companies wanted a piece of that action. And, in fact, AT&T really did overcharge for long distance, which was relatively cheap to provide because it mostly involved bouncing signals off satellites. But it used the surplus to subsidize local phone service, which was relatively expensive to provide because it involved miles of landline and millions of switches.

When other companies got into the long distance game, the cost of long distance went drastically down — but the cost of local service went drastically up. I suppose, in the end, the Justice Department did the right thing. Today the overall cost of telephony is a fraction what it was (I currently pay 2.2¢ a minute to phone England). But it's hard not to have a sneaking sympathy for AT&T. If nothing else, they used some of their awesome power to subsidize Bell Labs, which led to some very cool things like transistors and UNIX.

After the 1956 Consent Decree (no, it's way boring, look it up yourself) other manufacturers were allowed to sell phones in the US, but Ma Bell was frowny about having ferriners plugged into her wiring. Western Electric was Bell's Own Brand, and having a non-Western Electric phone was a bit daring and naughty. It had an "am I allowed to do this?" feel.

Throughout the seventies and eighties, many new phones from many new manufacturers hit the market. Suddenly, phones were available in an endless variey of crappy, ugly shapes. Designs were bad and the plastics were cheap and brittle. The novelty phone made its appearance - phones in the shape of brussel sprouts, footballs or Warner Brothers cartoon characters. Telephonery was stripped of all gravitas.

Thank goodness for Western Electric, where phones were phones. They had heft and seriousness. They were equipment, not toys. You could drop them, step on them, melt dimples in them with cigarettes or give them a hearty drink of water. If you winged one at someone's head, it would surely kill him. And you could still lease them, same as always, from the phone company.

My beloved Princess phone

If you think Auntie doesn't sound like the kind of gal who would be into things named "Princess," you're right. But the Princess phone was a fabulous instrument. It took up minimum deskspace. It had a small footprint, a low silhouette and a graceful shape. It was as solid as a brick (duck, Ken! Barbie's on the sauce again!). The faceplate lit up when the receiver was off the hook (important when you wake confused in the night and must order pizza).

Mine came with my first apartment, somewhere around 1980, and followed me from home to home. I picked it out specially. It was beige. I think, by that time, red and orange had lost the cool they enjoyed by virtue of not being black and white, and black and white appliances were cool again. But beige had a utilitarian, tech kind of cool, borrowed from the putty-colored enclosures of them new-fangled Personal Computer things.

I don't know if all Western Electric's line had adjustable ringer volume; I think that might have been a particular virtue of the Princess. But nothing is ever quite adjustable enough for me.

Ringers of this era consisted of a small metal bell and hammer. When enough current came down the line, the hammer would...hammer. Hence, ring. It was loud and harsh for my taste, so I stuck a piece of cardboard between the hammer and the bell. My phone didn't so much ring as purr.

In 1989, Western Electric finally relented and began to sell phones outright. They even set up short-lived telephone stores to do it in. Unfortunately, by that time, the Princess line had been discontinued. And nothing else would do. It was a little annoying to pay $80 (I think) for a ten year old, battle-scarred Princess (surely, she was a Dowager Princess by then), but if that's the only way I could hold onto the phone o' my dreams...

I've retired the phone now. It was working fine, but I'm not into holding great heavy lumps of plastic to my face anymore. Not with the time I spend on the phone. But there's not a doubt in my mind I could plug it in right this minute, and it would purr for me.

G'bye, Princess