I was thinking the other day about how our telephone system has evolved during my lifetime. Mother-in-law was telling a story nearly thirty years ago about how she had stopped her boys talking too much on the phone when they were teenagers, and I had video-ed her doing this. She was waving her hands around to demonstrate how she took the lightning guards out to cut off the conversation. I got to wondering if our grandkids would know what she was talking about, let alone the great grand-kids!

      How many of you, our readers, know what the lightning guards were and what they were for? How many of you remember the old telephone boxes that were attached to the wall near where the telephone wires came into the house?  The lightning guards were to protect the listener being banged in the ear if there was a thunder storm while talking….the central fuse would break if the lightning struck them and the line would go dead. High up on the wall inside above the brown box was where the line came in from the outside of the house, and this was protected from any lightning strikes there might be by two long tubes that had fuses in them. The idea was that these fuses were what connected the voices to the line and the line was effectively cut off if they were taken out or blown for some reason.

    Back then, the phones were attached to the wall of the house, usually in the living room, in  a large brown box on the wall, and the hand piece that you talked into (and listened to)  was attached to the box, so you could never go into your room and have a private conversation. It meant that you had to stay by the phone to use it. Every house had its telephone connected by wires that went along the roadsides to each house, and there were about 8-10 people who shared the same telephone line….this was called a “party line”. It meant that everyone on that line could tap into your conversations merely by lifting their handpiece and listening.

    Each house had its own number just like now ….I remember ours was 28W . The 28 was the line number and the W was the morse code number of W which was the ring of short, long, long. So when ever we heard that ring come through, we knew that call was for us. If it was three shorts (S), we knew it was for the house down the road, and two longs was M, and it was the neighbour further along.

          It was a great day when these phones were replaced by ones that had the rotary dial for ringing, and those who shared the line were cut back to two or three. After that came the day when each household had its own line, but we were still attached to the wall for talking! Then there came the cordless phones….great, we could get on with our chores while Auntie was giving us the latest gossip!!

     Then came the “brick”, a great heavy handpiece on the first really mobile  phones. Never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine the modern smart phone that we have today, and that does so much!

    I couldn’t help thinking that God has enabled all these marvellous modern inventions, and how much do we give Him thanks for them? How much do we stop to think about Him at all? It isn’t man’s smartness that has thought of these things, look at how many hundreds of years mankind lived  without any of these things and did everything the hard way. No machinery, no technology to make life easier. Having to carry suitcases full of reference books when travelling to classes or a conference, and now they are all contained in our pocket in our smart phone! Truly we have much to be thankful to God for, let us make sure we give Him thanks as we use them!