How much did it cost for the telephone item?

Answer 1

The Beginning of the end of the Bell System... The Hush-A-Phone was a simple product that slipped over a Candlestick Phone or Telephone Handset and gave the user some privacy (the first noise canceling microphone!). There were no electrical connections, it just slipped onto the phone. It had been advertised and sold in trade magazines for years. An AT&T lawyer just happened to see one in a shop window on his way to lunch one day, and decided that it was his job to stop the sale of this device since it was being attached to the Phone Company's property. AT&T had previously won manycourt cases against companies who sold advertising trinkets (premiums) that slipped over or otherwise attached to their phones. These trinkets had phone numbers for the local coal company, funeral parlor and general store, but you couldn't attach those numbers to your phone since the phone wasn't yours.

The Hush-A-Phone Decision was a big win over AT&T in the US Court of Appeals, in 1956. It allowed the Hush-A-Phone(and every other similar device) to be stuck to AT&T's phones.

The Original CarterFone

More than a decade after the Hush-A-Phone Decision, Tom Carter won a decision against AT&T

that allowed anybody to connect anything to AT&T's telephone network, if they used an AT&T

"Protective Coupler." That was the Carterfone Decision, in 1968.

Tom Carter fought the battle with AT&T which led to today's total deregulation (well, just about) of telephone equipment in the US. As a matter of fact, the PTTs in just about every country in the world (a PTT is the FCC of other countries) followed the US lead of deregulating their telephone network after seeing the benefits US citizens saw when they were able to connect whatever they needed to the telephone network, both voice and data. Without that deregulation, it's possible the internet would have stayed a network used by the government and large corporations, since the Phone Company would have surely made the price of data service, even slow modems, beyond the reach of most of us.

I mentioned to Helen Carter (Mrs. Tom Carter) that I didn't know how they stood up to AT&T, a company who specialized in crushing other companies. She replied:

"A few years before Tom's death in 1991, Harry Newton called me and said "Quick Helen....what would you put on Tom's tombstone"...so I responded quickly with "Here lies a stubborn Texan". That's the secret of how he did what he did."

Helen Carter also said:

"Tom's earliest prediction (about 1970) was that someday "voice and data will merge". So many people just laughed at that."

After the Carterfone Decision, up until the FCC started allowing connection of FCC registered equipment in 1976 (that you could buy in a local store), subscribers had to rent a protective coupler from the phone company (maybe $10 a month per line), which supposedly protected the public telephone network from any harm caused by the customer's phone equipment (CPE).

From my own experience, these protective couplers were very unreliable. They often left phone lines dead because they were defective, or the card cage they went into was defective (the cards and card slots had dissimilar metals, which caused oxidation and intermittent operation). The Phone Company didn't care, and didn't try to fix them very hard. They figured eventually the subscriber would get tired of dealing with the problems and go back to renting from them. I guess they were wrong.

I have to say that as an Interconnect phone man I made a lot of money going around checking dead line complaints. Probably 95% of the dead line service calls on phone systems are not the phone equipment, but a problem with the phone line coming into the building. It was that way before the Carterfone Decision, and it's that way today.

The CarterFone itself was a device that patched phone calls into 2-Way Radio equipment. It didn't actually wire into a phone or the telephone network. It had an acoustic coupler for a standard handset.

If you have an ad for a CarterFone let me know and I'll put it on our page and attribute it to you.

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Here's a picture of an original CarterFone (click on it to see a bigger version):

Jon Giberson's original CarterFone that

sits on the credenza in his office.

Jon is from Connections, a company specializing

in call accounting.

The plaque under the glass says:

The Original "Carterfone"

This original Carterfone, manufactured by Carter Electronics in 1959, served a need for mobile radio users to interconnect with the public telephone network. Use of the Carterfone was challenged by the telephone companies in 1966, and a lengthy struggle began that ultimately let to the Federal Communications Commission.

On June 26, 1968, the FCC handed down the landmark Carterfone Decision. The resolution of Tom Carter's struggle for acceptance of the concept of Interconnection permitted the creation of a multi-billion dollar industry that today serves all areas of communications needs data, voice, message. The historic Carterfone Decision allowed an open, competitive market to exist for communications equipment and facilities to the benefit of the communications user.

This original Carterfone is one of the few remaining devices in existence, and has been preserved to commemorate the historic legal milestone it represents.

Carterfone Communications Corporation