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Noiseless, Automatic Service: The History Of Domestic Servant Call Bell Systems In Charleston, South Carolina, 1740-1900, Wendy Danielle Madill
Noiseless, Automatic Service: The History Of Domestic Servant Call Bell Systems In Charleston, South Carolina, 1740-1900, Wendy Danielle Madill
All Theses
Shortly before Europe's industrial revolution, tradesmen discovered an ingenious way to rig bells in houses to mechanize communication between homeowners and their servants. Mechanical bell systems, now known as house bells or servant call bells, were prevalent in Britain and America from the late 1700s to the early twentieth century. These technological ancestors of today's telephone were operated by the simple pull of a knob or a tug of a tassel mounted on an interior wall. Bell-pulls increased privacy for both servants and their employers by separating both parties by the length of a bell wire, but they also increased …