Pre Historic Cell Phone

In the dimly lit last, at least in mine, there was an early form of communication that was passed down among the children as a legend, or a rite of passage perhaps. I am talking about the string and tin can telephone.

In the days when we had one phone in the downstairs hall, with one number and used by all, communication was expensive. When I wanted to talk to my friends I went outside. There were seldom if ever long distance calls and if one ever was made or came through, it was loud at our end.

We learned through word of mouth that you could make a free telephone out of two tin cans and a piece of string. Lots of arguments went into what size cans and what kind of string you used, and if it had to be waxed or not, but sooner or later we had to experiment.

First, a group of us chose the cans that were most available, Campbell soup cans from the trash, and washed them out carefully. Then, we chose kitchen string, which of course was most available as well and not waxed, even though I still think waxed would have worked better. Then we connected it and stood, four feet apart, speaking to each other. This was stupid and we realized it. No matter how softly we spoke, we could hear each other anyway without a can!

We reconfigured our connections, and we made a string maybe sixteen to twenty feet long and I stood with a friend or two on one side of the street and some other guys stood on the other side and we communicated. This seemed to work.

However, before we could establish this fact with some degree of certainty, a car came down the street! We hadn’t planned for this! We should have, in the hindsight of the last 60 years, lowered the string to the ground. However, being seven or eight years old we raised our hands so the car would come under the string. Not the best plan, given radio antennas.

The car antenna grabbed the string, the cans flew out of our hands and we ran like hell hearing the cans hit the car and the street with what seemd like a giant bang!