Which method of telephone calls was more popular: station-to-station or person-to-person?

Upvote:1

In my recollection of telephones in the late 1950's: first, rarely did anyone attempt any sort of long-distance phone call, exactly because of the various troubles mentioned in the question.

My parent's house had a "party line", and our "ring" was "two shorts, and a long".

To place calls "locally" we had to talk to an operator in all cases.

Given the unreliability and expense of "long distance" (or, actually, local) calls, we rarely engaged in this.

Yes, to save money, but in an emergency, one would make a "station-to-station" call... but that might fail. "Person-to-person" was another grade of expense up, and only as a last resort... and might fail, anyway...

Upvote:5

Your question misses the key point that across all of U.S. and Canada the various Bell companies sorted all long distance conversations into three distinct tariff classes based on the start time of the connection in the Caller's time zone. In Bell Canada's jurisdiction (most of Ontario and Quebec) those tariff classes were, as best I recall, the following:

  • Business Hours:

    • 9:00 am to 5:59 pm, Monday to Friday (except statutory holidays);

  • Off-Business Hours - typically a 30% to 50% discount:

    • 7:00 am to 8:59 am Monday to Friday & Sunday and holidays;
    • 6:00 pm to 10:59 pm Monday to Friday & Sunday and holidays;
    • 7:00 am to 10:59 om Saturday (except statutory holidays);

  • Family Hours - typically a 70% discount:

    • 9:00 am to 6:59 pm Sunday and holidays;
    • 11:00 pm to 6:59 am everyday.

Further, most medium or larger business rented their own WATS (Wide Area Telephone Service) lines, between specific cities, for intra- and inter-business calls at a discount.

The pattern of calling would have been very different in each tariff class, based on the purpose of the call.

Anyone making their call during the full rate Business Hours tariff often had to speak to a specific person - so would make a person-to-person call. But if you just need to speak to whichever receptionist or clerk was on phone duty you made the call station-to-station.

If the call could wait - one would wait until the Off-Business Hours or Family Hours tariff time, and call station-to-station - again unless it was necessary to speak to a specific person.

One also had, for longer conversation, the option to make a person-to-person call first to confirm presence - being charged the minimum time which was I believe 5 minutes - and if successful follow up with a station-to-station call at the cheaper rate.

Finally, there was the well known scam - forever made famous in an All in the Family episode conversation between Archie and Meathead - of making a person-to-person call for the wrong name. This was commonly done for binary acknowledgements such as "I made it home safe-and-sound" messages - where no other message was needed.

And finally, one could make an outgoing call in a high tariff class requesting a call-back from the destination, if they were sitting in a lower tariff class at the time of calling.

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