By FRNash/PHX, AZ (Frnash) on Monday, December 15, 2008 - 03:40 pm:
I remember, after several decades with no phone at all, when the first phone on my grandparents' farm in Bruces Crossing was one of those "wooden box on the wall" party line contraptions, with the attached mouthpiece and separate receiver hanging on the switchhook, and a crank magneto that would ring all the bells at the different locations ...
That probably was in the mid to late 1940's, I don't recall for sure. I have been trying for some time now, without success to recall when the telephone first arrived in 'Ruces 'Rossing, although I see by the OCTC web site that the dial exchange arrived there in 1949.
Does anyone here know for certain?
I really thought it was quite a throwback, coming from Detroit to spend six years at Michigan Tech in the late 1950's and graduating in June of 1964, all the while with a manual telephone system still in place in Houghton, Hancock, and the rest of the Keweenaw, while the MTU campus already had its own dial PBX system! All the more incongruous given the Copper Country's early adoption of the telephone just shortly after its invention: In