The End of the Line

Back in the 1950’s my parent’s house had a single landline shared with three other families. The clunky, rotary dial phone sat on a table in the stair hall with no privacy for conversations. You could also listen to the other families’ calls just by picking up the handset. The cable providing power and communications was three twisted copper wires held in place with round-headed tacks.

Later, public demand and the breakup of Ma Bell meant private lines with pushbutton phones in nearly every room in a house. The lines evolved to four copper wires, with red, yellow, black and green insulation, wrapped in a gray sheath and stapled to the trim.

Beginning in remote rural areas in the 1950’s, cable television (CATV) became popular because it carried many more channels with a better signal than broadcast television. Inside buildings, CATV was distributed with coaxial cable with four copper line surrounded with four layers of metallic braid. Newer systems used fiber optic cable with even more bandwidth.

I recently realized that no one in my building still uses a landline. During a current repainting of the top floor, I spent hours removing all the different lines snaking through the spaces (Top image). Some of the cables had so many layers of paint they were nearly invisible. It seems to be the end of the line.