"Number, please."

I love this.

The link - provided by the Porticus Centre - is from an old audio clip from an episode of Dragnet, c. 1949. The show did not edit out the actual connection of the call - almost two whole minutes of connecting the AT&T/Bell long lines from who-knows-where to Murphy, Idaho.

In this day and age of instantaneous communication, where time space is irrelevant, where one can not only hear the blah-blah chatter of others, but also is able to read various mindless (if innocent enough) inanities like "LOL" or "ur my BFF!!11" or "KOKO BAAATAH!11," we often forget how involved telephony once was.