I am on a Greek island today but can listen to such great live music shows for South Louisiana online (Great Louisiana Radio for Zydeco, Blues, and Cajun Available Online). It is a common accepted practice now but a few years ago it was not possible. Now you can even do it from your smart phone. Well, for some in the 1890s it was possible then.
In the late 1890s my great aunt liked to listen to music but the only place that you could hear music was the saloon in her newly-organized town in the Oklahoma Territory. In her day, this place was not appropriate for young single women. Fortunately, she was the first telephone operator in the town. So she called the saloon and left the line open, getting “piped in” background music, while she worked, whenever the band played.
There was an added benefit to this technology. She was able to also hear whenever a fight broke out in the saloon, a frequent activity, and notify the local police. These features, piped-in music and location monitoring, have taken on new forms and become disaggregated from her primitive phone lines. But now the smart phone is bring these capabilities and much more back to the phone.
Great vignette! What goes around comes around...sooner or later!!
pt
Posted by: Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. | April 24, 2012 at 04:26 PM