How the Telephone Talks (1919)
Running Time: 6 mins Black & White

All sounds travel in waves much the same as ripples in water." Educational film produced by Bray Studios New York, which was the dominant animation studio based in the United States in the years surrounding World War I.

How to Use the Dial Phone (1927)
Running Time: 7 mins Black & White

Instructional film on how to use a dial telephone.

Just Imagine Telephone Assembly (1947)
Running Time: 10 mins Black & White

Animated character "Tommy Telephone" produces a telephone by assembling 433 separate parts.

Learn About the Telephone (1965)
Running Time: 22 mins Color
Starring: Wright King, Pat Cardi, Pamelyn Ferdin
Bill sketches an animated person, Mr. Man, who takes us back through history to explain how people developed a need to communicate, and shows us devices that helped to do so.

Mr. Bell (1947)
Running Time: 32 mins Black & White
Starring: Raymond Edward Johnson, Mason Adams, Sara Anderson
Shows Alexander Graham Bell working with his deaf pupils and experimenting with the telephone and the wax cylinder record for the phonograph. His wide interests, which included aeronautics and the National Geographic Society, are also described.

Singing Wires (1951)
Running Time: 22 mins Black & White

The story of a 1950's farm family whose work and play are transformed when their rural property is hooked up to the electricity grid. .

Telephone Shorts - Operator Toll Dialing, Dialing (1949)
Running Time: 6 mins Black & White

- HELLO! THE TELEPHONE GIRL. - The average man might do much worse than court a telephone girl of New York. This is an opinion carefully formed after a study of the various exchanges, after several sessions of listening in by the side of on and another in active service, after chats here and there with chief operators. - For the Miss behind the telephone, whose voice is most frequently heard in the query, "What number, please?"--she is, as a rule, a slip of a girl, barely twenty oftentimes--is a very capable young person, indeed. The writer feels inclined to put her at the head of New York's army of working girls, for her brisk intelligence, her gentle ways, and the deft way she uses her small hands... - An exchange presents an interesting sight. About three sides of the great room, reaching very nearly to the ceiling, set in a structure that reminds one of an inner shell or wall, is a switchboard, with its projecting ledge. Along it, as closely as comfort will allow, are girls, and yet more girls. In a never-broken line they stretch on, over a hundred at a time, in an exchange like Cortlandt, girls tall and short, full-fledged women and round-faced lassies just out of the schoolroom, girls of dainty face and contour, and girls whom fate has dealt less kindly with, girls half-shabby and girls of pretty costume with wonderful little aprons about their waists. Nothing more or less than a concourse of youthful femininity that interests because of the marked diversity of the types shown... - If it were permitted to chat with subscribers, to gossip with each other, the telephone girls would have no time. It is nothing unusual for an expert operator to answer 125 calls an hour. She may even answer 150, or two and a half a minute. On the trunk lines, where the process is simpler and where exchanges are joined (a man on Broad wanting to speak to a man on Thirty-eighth Street, for example,) as many as 600 connections are often made in an hour. - Sometimes for five full minutes it is a mad race with the girl at the case to attend to all the demands made upon her. Perhaps, at certain hours of the day, things may calm down, and her hands, for a moment or two, lie idly in her lap. But even then she must be on the que vive for new calls, her eyes on the lookout. - Contrary to the belief of the public, a bell does not warn the telephone girl when the customer rings up "central." A little metal disk falls, displaying the subscriber's number, and that only, with no sound, with hardly a stir... - One of the disks of a drop falls, and the number is displayed. Quick as thought the girl takes up a plug (which itself fits in a hole, its long cord falling even below the floor,) and sticks it sharply in the hole whose number corresponds with the number on the disk. At the same instant she has thrown the little lever on a line with the plug's hole, and is already asking "What number, please?" - If the number that comes to her ears is of the same exchange what remains to be done is simple. The plugs spoken of go in pairs. She has only to pull out its mate, and push it in the proper hole. Then throwing another cam she presses the corresponding ringing button. That rings the bell for the party called. She listens sharply for an instant, then announcing "All right. Go ahead." - Her swiftly flying fingers are already busy with another call. One of her subscribers has called for a number on another exchange. She has the plug for his wire already in place, of course, but a more complicated connection is now to be made. - She presses a calling circuit button on the ledge. This brings to her aid another operator, a girl at the Trunk Line switchboard, of the distant exchange. "1029 Broad," she remarks quietly through her transmitter. More quickly than the word can be written a number comes back, 10. This is the number of the hole in her switchboard in to which her second plug must go to get the Broad Street connection. The plug is slipped in, the cam thrown, the ringing button pressed. Two more people have bridged space, two more lines of cord stretch over the switchboard, and several more calls are under way.

Telephone Shorts - Operator Toll Dialing, Teamwork (1949)
Running Time: 3 mins Black & White

- HELLO! THE TELEPHONE GIRL. - The average man might do much worse than court a telephone girl of New York. This is an opinion carefully formed after a study of the various exchanges, after several sessions of listening in by the side of on and another in active service, after chats here and there with chief operators. - For the Miss behind the telephone, whose voice is most frequently heard in the query, "What number, please?"--she is, as a rule, a slip of a girl, barely twenty oftentimes--is a very capable young person, indeed. The writer feels inclined to put her at the head of New York's army of working girls, for her brisk intelligence, her gentle ways, and the deft way she uses her small hands... - An exchange presents an interesting sight. About three sides of the great room, reaching very nearly to the ceiling, set in a structure that reminds one of an inner shell or wall, is a switchboard, with its projecting ledge. Along it, as closely as comfort will allow, are girls, and yet more girls. In a never-broken line they stretch on, over a hundred at a time, in an exchange like Cortlandt, girls tall and short, full-fledged women and round-faced lassies just out of the schoolroom, girls of dainty face and contour, and girls whom fate has dealt less kindly with, girls half-shabby and girls of pretty costume with wonderful little aprons about their waists. Nothing more or less than a concourse of youthful femininity that interests because of the marked diversity of the types shown... - If it were permitted to chat with subscribers, to gossip with each other, the telephone girls would have no time. It is nothing unusual for an expert operator to answer 125 calls an hour. She may even answer 150, or two and a half a minute. On the trunk lines, where the process is simpler and where exchanges are joined (a man on Broad wanting to speak to a man on Thirty-eighth Street, for example,) as many as 600 connections are often made in an hour. - Sometimes for five full minutes it is a mad race with the girl at the case to attend to all the demands made upon her. Perhaps, at certain hours of the day, things may calm down, and her hands, for a moment or two, lie idly in her lap. But even then she must be on the que vive for new calls, her eyes on the lookout. - Contrary to the belief of the public, a bell does not warn the telephone girl when the customer rings up "central." A little metal disk falls, displaying the subscriber's number, and that only, with no sound, with hardly a stir... - One of the disks of a drop falls, and the number is displayed. Quick as thought the girl takes up a plug (which itself fits in a hole, its long cord falling even below the floor,) and sticks it sharply in the hole whose number corresponds with the number on the disk. At the same instant she has thrown the little lever on a line with the plug's hole, and is already asking "What number, please?" - If the number that comes to her ears is of the same exchange what remains to be done is simple. The plugs spoken of go in pairs. She has only to pull out its mate, and push it in the proper hole. Then throwing another cam she presses the corresponding ringing button. That rings the bell for the party called. She listens sharply for an instant, then announcing "All right. Go ahead." - Her swiftly flying fingers are already busy with another call. One of her subscribers has called for a number on another exchange. She has the plug for his wire already in place, of course, but a more complicated connection is now to be made. - She presses a calling circuit button on the ledge. This brings to her aid another operator, a girl at the Trunk Line switchboard, of the distant exchange. "1029 Broad," she remarks quietly through her transmitter. More quickly than the word can be written a number comes back, 10. This is the number of the hole in her switchboard in to which her second plug must go to get the Broad Street connection. The plug is slipped in, the cam thrown, the ringing button pressed. Two more people have bridged space, two more lines of cord stretch over the switchboard, and several more calls are under way.

Telephone Shorts - Plane Talk (1965)
Running Time: 21 mins Black & White

Shows the varied forms of communications used by commercial air carriers in confirming reservations, preparing aircraft for flight, monitoring aircraft in flight and maintaining air-to-ground contact.

Telephone Shorts - Speeding Speech (1950)
Running Time: 10 mins Black & White

"...introduction of operator toll dialing: new equipment which reduces the time it takes for long distance call to go through very detailed explanation of how automatic switching equipment works; and how telephone calls are routed through different cities; Bell Labs people doing research; manufacture and assembly of Western Electric electronic telephone switches; installation of giant banks of switches..." Produced for AT&T/Bell System by Sound Masters.

Telephone Shorts - Story Without End (1950)
Running Time: 18 mins Black & White

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) and the Bell System look at postwar expansion of telephone services in America. The rapid growth of communications was made possible in part due to the development of microwave radio transmissions and the electronic transistor. The film exmaines changes to telephone services with examples of dialing, the crossbar switch, operator assited toll dailaing, direct toll dialing, the expansion of phone networks into rural areas, cabling and installation equipment, video services, mobile phones, and microwave transmission towers. .

Telephone Shorts - The Nation at Your Fingertips (1951)
Running Time: 10 mins Black & White

Bell System film about the first direct distance dialing from Englewood, New Jersey in 1951.

Telephone Shorts - You Can Tell by the Teller (1945)
Running Time: 18 mins Black & White

Instructional film for telephone business office cashiers (tellers) who interact with the public, with a heavy dose of period sexism.

The Town and the Telephone (1911)
Running Time: 10 mins Black & White
Starring: Miriam Hutchins, Joseph A. Wilkes, Bigelow Cooper
Preparations are being made by the telephone company to invade a small town where many property owners happen to be women of the antiquated type who object strenuously to the erection of unsightly poles. They draw up a formal protest and proceed to the office of the mayor, who, of course, is unable to grant their request. The leader of the anti-telephone pole movement finds, upon her arrival home, a number of workmen about to plant a pole in front of her property. With one bound she leaps into the hole to the astonishment of the nonplussed workmen. A crowd soon gathers. The foreman, superintendent and a policeman make all sorts of threats, but to no avail. She holds the fort and defies them all. All wonder how it's going to end, when a bright-looking school teacher comes to the rescue and whispers something in the superintendent's ear. He sees the point and, with the policeman, leaves the seat of war. The officer soon returns with a tiny live mouse. Needless to say, the determined lady scrambles out of the hole instantly and the pole is planted triumphantly.

We Learn About the Telephone (1965)
Running Time: 22 mins Color
Starring: Wright King, Pat Cardi, Pamelyn Ferdin
Bill sketches an animated person, Mr. Man, who takes us back through history to explain how people developed a need to communicate, and shows us devices that helped to do so.