Spun 0
Ester Strogen, 82, of Canton (Ohio–ed.), first leased two black rotary phones — the kind whose round dial is moved manually with your finger — in the 1960s. Back then, the technology was new and owning telephones was unaffordable for most people.
I remember when phones went to lease or own in the early 80s. When the “trust-busters” managed to lift the requirement that your phone had to come from the phone company, so customers could own their own phones, customers got the option to (1) buy the phone from the phone company, (2) lease it, or (3) get their own phone from another source.
That was the week I came back from a business trip to find no phone in my cubicle. The communications people told me that a lot of employees had elected option three stolen phones.
Up till then, it was not that telephones were too expensive for most people, it was that the Ma Bell did not sell them. When you arranged for phone service, Ma Bell came out and installed a phone; if you cancelled service, they came and took the phone.
Another little quibble: the story is about 60 years off on when the dial telephone qualified as “new technology.” It was touch-tone phones, introduced in 1964, that were new then.
