The Hagley Vault

By 1930, almost 41% of American housing units featured a telephone. But the Depression undid many of these gains. By 1933, more than 2.5 million households had cancelled their service and fewer than a third of American homes were reachable by phone. Which perhaps explains why corporations like American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) and the Bell Telephone Company spent so much of the first half of the twentieth century trying to teach people how to use the things.

This 1939 photograph of women at a Demonstration Telephone Call Application desk is from the AT&T building at the New York World's Fair, which took place in Flushing Meadows, Queens from April 30, 1939 to October 31, 1940. 

Nearly 45 million people visited the event. The theme was "The World of Tomorrow." The fairground was divided into seven thematic zones; manufacturing and distribution, transportation, amusements, community interests, government, food, and communications and business,…Read more...