How Party Lines Worked in the Old Days

Younger people will have no clue about this, but in the old days many people grew up using party lines. In 1950 a whopping 75% of residential phone customers on Bell Systems (about 11 million people) were on party lines, which were shared telephone lines. These lines were used by many neighbors, which did make for some awkward moments. Here’s how these party lines worked back then and how folks managed this complex system.

Home Phones and Their Cost

The line was shared, but each household had their own landline phone wired into their home. Each household would have their unique ring sequence, but all the lines might ring at the same time. So you had to listen for your ring. If the party line only had two households (and up to four depending on the area) on it then the phone would generally only ring in the house that the caller was trying to reach.

There were advantages to these lines as the cost was reduced compared to a single line. Back in those days getting a phone installed was quite a big expense. Even into the 1906s it remained very expensive. Many families were happy to have any telephone service at all and these shared lines helped them do that in a more economical way.

Problems with the Service

The downside to this type of service was that those who were not in your household could answer your ringtone, causing confusion. Another issue was this was before call waiting so if one person in one household spent a lot of time on the phone talking they essentially monopolized the line for everyone else on that line -perhaps dozens of people. Customers were advised to keep calls short and to wait a few minutes between phone calls to give others a chance to make their calls, too.

Etiquette for the Party Lines

If there was an emergency you had break through the line if someone else was using it. They would have to decide whether to hang up or not and let you make your emergency call. Likewise, you also had to check to see if anyone else was using the line before even starting your call- otherwise the other callers on the line would have to listen to you dial. The worst by far was knowing that if you shared the party line with a town gossip they might try to listen into your calls. Most people, however, were just as interested in giving privacy to their neighbors as they were in maintaining their own.

It’s not surprising that party lines went out of fashion. There were a lot of rules and stipulations to using them! Still many families had some funny anecdotes about these shared lines back in the day. It was only par for the course that you would slip up or have a silly interaction with a neighbor eventually.

The party lines of the day were helpfully navigated with instruction for customers by Bell Systems, which advised how to best make use of these shared lines and the proper etiquette in sharing a line with so many other customers. It’s so different to how we use our smartphones today, which are deeply personal objects we rarely share with others, yet we use them to make calls just about anywhere one could think of. How times change!