Comments on: What the Telephone Map Shows

By: George

George — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:53:45 +0000

I wonder how long and hard they fought against their “agreement.” Once connected, they still didn’t play well together, though.

In the fifties, I had friends who lived in a town 10 miles from me that had an independent phone co. It was easier, and less expensive, to call the moon than them. Sort of like roaming charges, I suppose.

By: Mark L

Mark L — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:59:49 +0000

This is probably a fair representation of population at the time. It is very interesting
to see the shift from 1910 to the present. People migrated away from the Great Lakes region
to the west coast and to the southeast coast.

By: Eliyahu

Eliyahu — Sat, 31 May 2008 15:54:36 +0000

Let’s face it — there are a few things that work better as a monopoly, and the phone company was one of them.

By: MKremer

MKremer — Sat, 31 May 2008 06:13:27 +0000

The most obvious blank spots (or almost blank) between then and now are: Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, and (especially) the Los Angeles area.

By: Blurgle

Blurgle — Sat, 31 May 2008 05:50:42 +0000

Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio are especially exchange-rich as compared to other states. Perhaps the land use of the time – small farms, small towns, but prosperous – meant that there were more exchanges in any given area than there would be elsewhere.

The South is relatively exchange-poor, but at this time much of the rural South didn’t have telephone service yet. The same could be said of much of the inland southwest.

By: Doug

Doug — Sat, 31 May 2008 03:19:54 +0000

In 1910, Florida had over 750,000 people, and Nevada had only 81,000…yet they seem to have similar amount of telephone exchanges. By comparison, Colorado also had about 750,000 people at the time, and it seems to have twice the amount of exchanges as Florida. Of course, Colorado was (and is) dominated by one large city (Denver), whereas in 1910 Miami only had 5,000 people! Jacksonville, which I believe was the largest city at the time, only had 58,000 (Denver had almost a quarter million at the time).

By: JMyint

JMyint — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:55:33 +0000

The AT&T of today is not the same company. It is one of the former baby bells (SBC) that was created after the breakup that is slowly gobbling up the compitition including the former AT&T.

Prior to the land boom of the 1920’s much of South Florida was considered uninhabitable.

By: JeffK

JeffK — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:35:02 +0000

Does that ad say they were facing monopoly charges almost 70 years before the big break-up? Before and after divestiture, and moving around, I lived under AT&T, Ameritech, Pacific Bell and SBC dominance. Now, every place I have lived is mostly served by...AT&T.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 31 May 2008 00:21:44 +0000

That’s an interesting point.

Most of south Florida must have been empty at that time.

Orlando would have been all orange groves, if anything.

No Las Vegas, either.

By: Napthalene

Napthalene — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:59:42 +0000

Miami doesn’t even seem to exist.

By: Benzene

Benzene — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:42:38 +0000

The telephone map reminds me of the Earth at night from space map. The population centers haven’t changed much in nearly 100 years.