Tap Those Keys

Pull out our phone. You can dial a phone number by tapping keys which aren't keys at all. They are flat lights that can detect your touch and know which circuit is being closed (or is it opened?) and therefore which button/key you pressed.

Before that, we pushed raised buttons, and before that we put a finger in a hole on a disk, somewhat reminiscent of a child's toy, and we spun it. The phone (or the wires?) knew the number by counting the clicks. Dialing zero, ironically, had the most clicks.

Prior to the invention of the rotary phone, you could simply pick up the handset of the phone, click the lever a few times, and ask the operator to connect you to the proper number. Back then there were so few phones on line that they could be identified as Cooper 45 or Green 32. It almost sounds like BINGO or Battleship.

Soon identifiers such as 321 or 630 were created. The US started using seven digit numbers (555-5621) by the 1920s.

But before light screens and touch tone buttons and rotaries and switchboards, people communicated by tapping keys.

One key on this end could create all the letters of the alphabet, and someone on the other end could hear the clicking key and write down the message. The message contained the name and address, perhaps, of the intended recipient, and someone was hired to take the message to that person. Both ends -- the sender and the recipient -- paid a fee. The sender paid by the word, while the recipient simply paid for the delivery.

It was the telegraph, and in October 1861, Western Union completed America's first transcontinental telegraph, allowing for instantaneous communication between Washington, D.C. and San Francisco.