Your Telephone and How It (Used) to Work

The future of telephony, as conveyed in a series of black and white sketches from 1962 in the book Your Telephone and How it Works.

Operator comically overwhelmed by proliferation of telephone numbers in the near future, rendered here as snake-like cords seeking to drive her insane.

"Tapping is Faster Than Turning:"  AT&T laying the groundwork for new feature destined to elicit needless complaints from those still attached to the rotary phone.

The often promised, barely realized "videophone," seen here connecting two people who live far apart as signified by differing configurations of pointy buildings in the background.

In the future, computer punch-cards will be inserted into everything, including your telephone, maybe even you.

Seemingly innocuous illustration of the forthcoming miracle of electronic paging, oblivious to the coming reorganization of the economy around the drug trade and belying the impending transformation of the world into an electronic hellscape of compulsory availability.