Not long ago I was out of town, sitting in an unfamiliar neighborhood cafe and talking with a buddy on my mobile phone. Quick as a text message, the proprietor rushed in and pointed to a sign over the door forbidding such activities in her establishment. I obediently nodded, said my goodbyes, and shut the device down.

I then spent the next fifteen minutes listening to a couple at the adjacent table have a loud argument, about which the owner said nothing.

Still, I try to be accommodating in these situations. It makes no sense to argue with folks about this stuff. Once people get it in their heads that checking tomorrow's weather on your iPhone or Android device at the table is rude, it just is—until the day that it isn't any more.

But since everybody's debating the appropriateness of cell phones and laptops in restaurants and cafes, it's worth remembering that our attitudes towards communications gadgets change constantly. One way to get a sense of that is to read Claude S. Fischer's wonderful tome, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940.

The Telephone Pledge

From the late-19th through the early 20th-century, the telephone was the communications tool of the well-off and the middle class, Fischer notes.

"Besides those with business reasons, it was the social elite who subscribed in 1900," his survey of three northern California towns concluded.

Doctors, lawyers, local storekeepers—these represented the Bell System's core market. They were often the only people who could afford to lease the service. When blue collar households had to decide between a phone or a Model-T Ford, they often chose the latter.

Although innovations like party lines and rural co-ops gradually expanded telephony to rural and urban working class consumers, by the early 1930s much of this progress was undone by the Depression. Between 1930 and 1933, over 2.5 million Americans dropped telephone service. The nationwide subscription rate fell by ten percent, to less than a third of the total household market.

Within this context, AT&T publicists took pains to portray the telephone as a respectable, middle class gadget, to be used politely and responsibly. Bell Telephone franchise ads constantly railed against rude or argumentative behavior over the receiver, as in a 1910 notice with the headline "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the Telephone."

"The marvelous growth of the Bell System has made use of the telephone universal and misuse a matter of public concern," the ad warned. Some local phone companies even pushed for, and won, city laws making profanity in phone conversation a finable or jailable offense.

AT&T ad, 1910

AT&T went so far as to send out a card titled "The Telephone Pledge."

"I believe in the Golden Rule and will try to be as Courteous and Considerate over the Telephone as if Face to Face," it required consumers to declare.

Hello?

Back then nothing bugged phone company executives so much as a practice that we regard today as utterly normal—the use of the word "hello" in initial telephone conversation. In 1910, Bell's Telephone Engineer magazine sponsored a contest for the best essay on proper telephone etiquette. AT&T had the prize article distributed to telephone directories. Here's what it said about the h-word:

"Would you rush into an office or up to the door of a residence and blurt out 'Hello! Hello! Who am I talking to?' No, one should open conversations with phrases such as 'Mr. Wood, of Curtis and Sons, wishes to talk with Mr. White...' without any unnecessary and undignified 'Hellos."

This, of course, did not stop people from practicing hello-speak—most embarrassingly for AT&T, it was a favorite of the Bell franchise system's growing army of female switchboard operators. Eventually the company gave up on its crusade, dubbing the operators "hello girls."

Undaunted, no aspect of telephone use escaped the interest of AT&T's elite squad of social micro managers.

"Speak directly into the mouthpiece," explained a California franchise's instruction manual, "keeping mustache out of the opening."

The presence of your company...

Ma Bell wasn't alone in its concerns. There were plenty of other self-appointed experts eager to lay down the line on proper telephone use. At the top of their debate list was a single sticky wicket—whether it was appropriate to round up dinner party guests via phone calls.

People still read etiquette manuals today, but not with the voraciousness that they did a century ago. Fischer scoured dozens of these widely consulted books to survey their wisdom on the invitation question. From 1890 through 1910 they all agreed—snail mail was the appropriate venue for dinner party announcements. Phone invites were generally too rude for words.

Caxton magazine, 1910

A solicitation by telephone "is never excusable," warned Annie Randall White in 1900, "save among very intimate friends," and accompanied by a profuse apology, of course. A 1906 manual agreed. Only "to an impromptu dinner can guests be invited by telephone, telegraph message, or verbal request"—that was that.

The logic against telephone invitations centered around the worry that voice-to-voice solicitations put the invitee on the spot, making the request hard to decline for all except close personal friends.

In 1910, AT&T's own advertisements conformed this sentiment. One extolled the Bell service, which "makes it possible to arrange delightful social affairs at the last moment." The easiest way "to get up an informal dinner party, quickly," another noted, "is by telephone."

Quick and simple

This consensus lasted through the mid-1920s. As late as 1924, The New York Times continued to direct telephone users to the high road. "There are persons who should know better who give invitations by telephone, and others who accept or decline in the same casual method," declared its Washington society column. "In both instances there is a deplorable lack of form."

But by then it was obvious that cracks were appearing in the wall of established wisdom—fissures created by the fact that dinner party makers in real life were using their phones all the time. By 1922 Emily Post had become the country's leading expert on etiquette, her book a national bestseller. A year later, Post conceded the true situation to her readers.

Custom, which has altered many ways and manners has taken away all opprobrium from the message by telephone and... all informal invitations are sent and answered by telephone. Such messages, however, follow a prescribed form.

Finally, around 1938, Post's contemporary Margaret Fishback declared that the war on dial-up invitationals was over. Phones had won the fight.

"The telephone, too, is becoming more and more the harbinger of invitations to dinner, lunch, cocktails, and week-end parties," Fishback wrote. "It's quick and simple, unless the list of guests is too long."

Hello again

But while that question was now settled, by the late 1940s experts still weren't sure about "hello." "Equals" could use it, declared Vogue editor and future politician Millicent Fenwick, but not servants answering calls.

Caxton magazine, 1910

Writer Margary Wilson disagreed. "When answering the telephone it is perfectly correct to say 'Hello'," Wilson opined. "Some people seem to find that it is undignified, but the experiment shows that any other words sound funnier still."

What does all this history have to do with our contemporary mobile phone dilemmas? A lot, I think. It suggests that the enormous utility of these devices tends to wear down our conceptions of propriety and etiquette, forcing us to reconfigure them as millions of gadget users abandon the conventional wisdom. Most of us want to be polite, or least not be a bother to others. And so, over the decades, we adjust the rules as new technologies appear.

Sometimes it doesn't take that long, though. Several months ago I got my hand slapped for checking e-mail on my BlackBerry at a dinner party. But the other night, sitting over a restaurant meal, none of us could remember the name of an actor in a movie.

Out came my nifty new Droid X, with the Internet Movie Database bookmarked and the answer delivered in seconds. Nobody complained.

Further reading