Edwardian Phone Phreaks...

I’m no electronics expert but, when I jump into a genre like Classic Call of Cthulhu, I tend to forget about the levels of technology which abounded at that time. I remember one game where our team carefully constructed a plan of escape from our hotel, wherein we were besieged by Evil Cultists. Carefully sharing the details of our plan by telephone from one suite to the other, it completely escaped all of us that anyone could tap the telephone. Well, suffice it to say that it was a learning experience...

It’s easy to forget what technology was available at the time and to assume that something we take for granted nowadays could or couldn’t have been done “back then”; this is how we start to think that “only aliens in spacecraft” could have built pyramids, or scribbled on the Nazca Plain. Just for the record all of the following things were invented before 1900: dynamite; the cathode ray tube; the diesel engine; celluloid photographic film; the photoelectric cell; motion picture projectors; and colour photography. Let your mad scientists chew on that!

The early forms of telephony that held sway in the early Twentieth Century had many advantages, not least that basic fact that they allowed people to communicate over vast (or even not so vast) distances. For one thing they were durable: drop them, hit them, they would most likely survive and continue to function. As long as the transmission infrastructure was in place, the message would most likely get through. But that infrastructure was the Achilles Heel of the whole set-up.

In China during the Republican Era, there was an enormous resistance to the construction of telegraph lines and railway tracks. The Chinese population saw these networks as damaging to the feng shui of the land: lines cutting the environment were felt to be literally cutting the energy of the country. Too, while many of these facilities were built across “useless land” (in an effort to be helpful), much of this territory was already being used as graveyards and so the laying of a telegraph line was thought to disturb the dead. The lines themselves would bleed long stalactites of bloody rust in the wet weather and moan in the wind, thus lending credence to the local beliefs.

Mobs of concerned peasants, often stirred-up by anti-Western rabble-rousers, would sometimes head out after dark and dismantle the new technology, often the very same length of track or line which they had laid during the day.

To combat this kind of interference – and not only in China – observers were employed to travel the length of the lines and tracks and make sure that everything was functioning as it should: anyone who’s ever heard Glen Campbell singing “I Am A Lineman For The County” will get a sense of what’s going on here.

And so, having been bitten in the past by Crafty Culties using telephonic know-how, I don’t see any reason why Investigators can’t use the same information to their own advantage. Behold - portable telephones circa. 1911:

“L.M. ERICSON’S PORTABLE TELEPHONE, No. 392, fitted in a leather case, with strong leather strap so that it can be easily carried by a man. It is fitted with a telescopic handmicrotelephone, N. 496 generator, bell, two line terminals, and a dry-cell battery; suitable for inspectors of telephone and telegraph lines, weighs about 8lbs. £5/5/- (US$26.25) each.”

“L.M. ERICSON’S PORTABLE TELEPHONE, No. 390, fitted in a strong oak case. It is fitted with handmicrotelephone 492, with waterproof cords, two dry-cell batteries, generator, bell, lightning protector, and terminals for line and earth; suitable for places where a temporary telephone is required, weighs about 16.5lbs. £5/5/- (US$26.25) each.”

Pretty cool, huh? When was the last time you had to worry whether or not your phone had a waterproof cord? Or a “lightning protector”?

In gaming terms, using these items requires that you have access to the telephone lines, usually at a telephone pole or junction box. Fitting the device requires a successful Electrical Repair Roll but then the world is the mussel of your choice.

For those interested in the availability of this hardware, the source for this information is a facsimile edition of a mail-order catalogue available in Australia in the Edwardian period. If they could get mobile phones in Australia in 1911, I’m pretty sure that there would have been no problems getting your hands on one in New York or London at the same time! The pricing is fairly consistent for the first two decades of the century – costs varied a little over time but were fairly steady. Until the Wall Street Crash, anyway.