The number of telephones in service in the U.S. at the end of each month from 1916 to 1942 show a seasonal slowdown in the telephone business in summer months. At the end of August, the number of telephones was typically 0.6% below trend.[1] As the telephone business picked up in the autumn, deviations from trend decreased until swinging positive in March. This seasonality is the net result of persons adding new telephone service and persons dropping telephone service. Given adds dominated drops to create a strong secular growth trend, the summer slowdown is plausibly interpreted as fewer businesses and residences installing new telephone services during summer months.[2]
Monthly toll service revenue from 1933 to 1982 doesn’t have a simple, easily interpretable seasonal pattern. The median deviation is largest in January: 3.2% below trend when monthly traffic is normalized to an equal number of days per month.[3] August does not show a summer-travel toll revenue spike, there’s no Mother’s Day May spike, nor a December holiday spike. Perhaps variation in residence and business toll revenue is negatively correlated across months and thus smooths aggregate toll revenue. Perhaps revenue reporting is not perfectly correlated in time with actual traffic. AT&T’ explicitly mentioned accounting for seasonality for its charts of the deviation of telephone traffic from normal from 1902 to 1929. January seasonality is not an effect that readily comes to mind. What exactly is going on with these data and toll-traffic seasonality remains unclear.
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Graph: the graph shows box plots for the monthly sets of monthly deviations
[1] Specifically, -0.6% is the median percent deviation of August monthly data from the August-centered, 12-month moving average of the monthly number of telephones.
[2] Monthly data on the number of telephones in service is publicly available only from Oct. 1915 to June, 1943. Telephone companies know well the current pattern of telephone business seasonality. It would be interesting to know whether seasonality patterns have changed, and if so, why.
[3] Given that the number of days per month varies from 28 to 31 (11%), normalization is important. Normalizing with workdays rather than calendar days makes little difference to the pattern of median monthly deviations.
Long before YouTube, television, and even magic lantern shows, storytellers used sequences of painted images as part of their storytelling performances. Storytelling as a service that non-elite itinerants hawked on the street probably arose with the concentration of person in cities, occupational differentiation, and the development of a currency. As the business of storytelling became more competitive, adding painted images to storytelling is a plausible business strategy. Painted images would be a capital investment for a storyteller. That investment would enhance and differentiate a storytelling performance, and also increase barriers to entry for others to create a similar performance.
Over the past millennium, pictorial storytelling seems to have been practiced in Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia, across central and south Asia, Mesopotamia, Northern Africa, and through to Western Europe. The Hamzanama is a lavish artifact of pictorial storytelling from the 16’th-century Mughal Empire under Akbar. However, pictorial storytelling was typically a low-status, popular practice. Hence one should expect it to be relatively poorly documented in the (elite) historical record. Japanese picture storytelling called kamishibai achieved huge popularity in mid-twentieth-century Japan. Kamishibai was technologically possible across Asia three thousand years earlier. Large scrolls or sheets containing multiple images arranged across a single surface provide a cheaper means for displaying multiple images. A variety of evidence exists for the use of such technology in pictorial storytelling.[1]
Manuscripts found in Dunhuang (northwestern China) indicate that a vibrant trade in pictorial storytelling existed in China about 1200 years ago. Among the 40,000 manuscripts found at Dunhuang are a small number of non-canonical, non-classical, non-documentary texts. These manuscripts, which are called bian-wen, are vernacular Chinese narratives with Buddhist themes. Relatively unskilled lay scribes wrote the bian-wen. They typically have alternating prose and verse, and they are linked to secular, professional pictorial storytelling.[2] References to pictures seem to be coded with the conventional phrase “this is the place” (ch’u):
Look at the place where Maudgalyāyana sits meditating deep in the mountains — how is it?
This is the place where he goes forward and asks the reasons for this situation [3]
A similar coding occurs in Indian pictorial storytelling, which probably was an important source for bian-wen. Moreover, the same phrase ch’u appears in cartouches in Dunhuang wall paintings showing scenes in stories.[4]
A similar implicit deictic in Jewish and Christian sacred texts suggests an earlier practice of pictorial storytelling. In Hebrew scripture, in both narrative and in prophetic passages, the Hebrew word hen/hinnē (variously translated into English as “behold,” “look,” and “see”) marks passages:
And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth….” (Gen 1:29)
Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14) [5]
A similar marker occurs in Christian scripture, both in quotations of Hebrew scripture and in new text.[6] Scholars do not understand clearly the textual function of this marker. Perhaps it is a legacy of early pictorial storytelling.[7] In any case, in subsequent Christian devotional art, scenes marked in this way — the Annunciation (“Behold the handmaid of the Lord”) and the presentation of the scourged Christ (“Behold the man”) — became highly popular images.
[1] See Mair (1988), which describes pictorial storytelling historically across Asia and Europe. Sequential image art (narrative art) has been attested in an early Mesopotamian city about 5000 years ago. Hellenistic epigrams artfully manipulated the narrative framework of Greek sculpture and paintings. While pictorial storytelling is related to these forms, pictorial storytelling involves using oral narrative and pictures to perform stories for a popular audience. By popular audience, I mean low-status persons attracted to the performance by its personal appeal to them.
In Rome about 1440, an assistant to a clerk apparently referred to pictorial storytelling:
To support this opinion {that everyone thinks different}, one of the assistants told a fable that he had seen in Germany both written and in pictures.
{ Tum quidam ad eam sententiam fabulam retulit, quam nuper in Alemannia scriptam pictamque vidisset. }
Poggio Bracciolini, Facetiae 100, “The humorous story of an old man who carried his donkey on his back {Facetissimum de sene quodam qui portavit asinum super se}, Latin text from Poggio (1879) vol. 1, p. 156, my English translation based on the translation in id., but tracking the Latin more closely.
[2] Mair (1988), esp. Ch. 4, describes Dunhuang bian-wen. Mair transliterates bian-wen as pien-wen and Dunhuang as Tun-Huang. Mair also calls bian-wen / pien-wen “transformation texts.”
[3] From Dunhuang, Transformation Text on Mahamaudgalyayana Rescuing His Mother from the Underworld (S2614), trans. Mair (1983) pp. 90, 92.
[4] Mair (1989) pp. 73-4. Mair (1995) pp. 33-4 notes that shih (“the time when…”) is more common on Dunhuang wall paintings. He observes:
Genres which use shih as their narrative marker would appear to have a closer affinity to textual and doctrinal sources, whereas those which use ch’u as their narrataive marker seem to be based more on illustrations and the oral tales that accompanied them. .. in general, the shih (“time when…”) type belonged to the religieux and their patrons, while the ch’u (“place where…”) type belonged to the folk.
[5] Trans. King James Version (KJV). Isaksson (2000) p. 388 reports 1,157 occurrences of hen/hinnē in Hebrew scripture. KJV regularly translates these words as “behold,” which occurs 1,104 times in the KJV of Hebrew scripture.
[6] The Hebrew hen/hinnē is translated into Greek as idou/ide, and into Latin as ecce. In English translations, it becomes “behold,” “look,” see.” Modern English translations tend to smooth over the supra-textual, implicitly deitic aspect of this marker. Isaksson (2000), p. 389, notes:
The effect of the particle hinnē is that the chain of events in the main narrative thread is interrupted, a dissociation is introduced, and the following text is marked as an impression of some kind, not necessarily visual. … We could say that hinnē as a macro-syntactic marker tells the reader or listener, “Be watchful now, the narrative chain is being interrupted by an impression, but only temporarily, it will soon be continued!”
This marker occurs 222 times in Christian New Testament scripture. It occurs mainly in the Gospels and in Revelation (170 occurrences in total). That it is not common in the genre of letters suggests its performative associations.
[7] That each instance of hen/hinnē and idou/ide in Jewish and Christian scripture was associated with an image that a storyteller displayed seems highly unlikely. It is much more plausible that the source of this textual convention was pictorial storytelling in the highly competitive verbal markets of the Hellenistic world.
Mair, Victor H. 1983. Tun-huang popular narratives. Cambridge studies in Chinese history, literature, and institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mair, Victor H. 1988. Painting and performance: Chinese picture recitation and its Indian genesis. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Mair, Victor H. 1989. T’ang transformation texts: a study of the Buddhist contribution to the rise of vernacular fiction and drama in China. Cambridge, Mass: Council of East Asian studies, Harvard University by the Harvard University Press.
Poggio. 1879. Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini. The facetiae or jocose tales of Poggio, now first translated into English with the Latin text. Paris: Isidore Liseux (vol. 1, vol. 2).
O how refin’d how elegant we’re grown!
What noble Entertainments Charm the Town!
Whether to hear the Dragon’s roar we go,
Or gaze surpriz’d on Fawks’s matchless Show,
Or to the Opera’s, or to the Masques,
To eat up Ortelans, and empty Flasques
And rifle Pies from Shakespear’s clinging Page,
Good gods! how great’s the gusto of the Age.
This is from London in 1724: William Hogarth’s engraving, Masquerades and Operas (larger version here; with engraved text, but smaller, here). At the center, a woman pushes a wheelbarrow containing books labeled, with variant spellings, Congreve, Dryden, Otway, Shakespeare, Foe, Ben Jonson, and possibly Addison. With a text ribbon she cries, “Waste paper for Shops.” On the left, a fool and a satyr holding up a purse labeled 1000£ lead a crowd into a Masquerade house and a performance by Faux’s (Fawkes). On the showcloth labeled opera, the Earl of Peterborough, along with two other English nobles, kneels to three Italian opera performers (Berenstadt, Cuzzoni, and Senesino), pours out a bag of gold, and says, “Pray Accept 8000£.” On the right, a large crowd is going into a pantomime performance of Dr. Faustus. In the background, the Earl of Burlington gestures toward the roof of the closed Academy of Arts.
Fawkes was a street fair entertainer like those at eighteenth-century Parisian trade fairs. A London newspaper advertisement in 1726 describe what Fawkes offered spectators:
first, his surprizing Dexterity of Hand, in which he far exceeds all that ever pretended to the same Art, with his Cards, Eggs, Mice, Money, and several Curious Birds from divers Parts of the World that never were seen here before. 2d. His famous Posture Master, who is allowed to be the best in Europe of that kind. 3d. His Musical Clock that plays Variety of Tunes on the Organ, Flute and Flagelet, with Birds whistling and singing as natural as Life. 4th. His Puppet Show, with the Comical Humours of Punch and his Wife Joan : Likewise a Court of the richest and largest Figures ever shown in England, being as big as Men and Women.
This is popular culture in a commercially thriving city. Today, it’s moved to the Internet.
By October, 1923, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) was producing a monthly booklet summarizing business conditions in the U.S. The booklet presented movements in macroeconomic indices and described general business conditions by Bell operating company regions. It also highlighted real business activity compared to telephone traffic.[1] The relevant chart from the November, 1925 booklet is shown above (larger image here). The chart highlights that telephone traffic is significantly more stable than the general volume of business.
All telephone traffic was more stable than just long-distance telephone traffic. The booklet included two other charts (large image) describing AT&T’s long-distance telephone traffic (long lines message traffic). One chart shows the robust growth of long-lines message traffic. From Dec., 1902, to Sept. 1929, AT&T long lines traffic grew equivalent to a steady 9.7% growth per year.[2] Another chart adjusted for long-run trends and seasonal effects to show fluctuations in long-lines traffic. In the business boom of late 1907, the general business volume was 18% higher than normal; long-lines traffic, spiky, but on average about 8% higher than normal; and overall telephone traffic, 4% higher than normal. In the economic boom of early 1920, general business was 12% above normal; long-lines traffic, 10% above normal; and overall telephone traffic, 8% above normal. A relatively higher share of business use and higher cost probably explains the greater volatility of long-distance traffic relative to (predominately local) overall traffic. That AT&T compared overall telephone traffic, rather than long-lines traffic, to the general business index suggests that AT&T wanted to emphasize the stability of the telephone business.
The Great Depression of the early 1930s provides a larger example of the relative stability of the telephone business. Telephone census data indicate that calls per telephone rose across the Great Depression, while the number of telephones in service fell about 6%. These data are for the telephone censuses of 1927 and 1932. Monthly telephone data provide better temporal resolution. Monthly telephone data show that the number of telephones peaked in July 1930, and bottomed in August, 1933. The overall fall in the number of telephones was probably about 19% (using a plausible adjustment for reporting changes).[3] The fall in real GDP across the Great Depression was 27%, with manufacturing production falling nearly 40%. The fall in food and textile production, in contrast, was similar to that of telephones.[4] This pattern suggests that, by the early 1930s, telephones had become quite important to those persons who had them.
[1] AT&T included a similar chart in its 1919 Annual Report (pp. 44). Under the heading “Stability of the Telephone Business,” the previous page stated:
Not only does the telephone business grow steadily even in times of business depression, as is shown by the diagram on the back cover of this report [diagram showing the number of Bell Telephones in service, from 1876 to the present], but that it does not suffer any substantial retardation in its normal growth during such periods, appears from the chart on the following page.
The telephone business varies very slightly from its normal growth as compared with the fluctuations of general business. This is an element of security and enables the business to be carried on with a lower margin of surplus earnings than would be safe in general industrial undertakings.
The exact composition of the general business volume index that AT&T constructed isn’t clear. The index generally tracks modern reference dates for business cycle expansions and contractions. The index apparently is a composite of business volume indices for construction, iron and steel, copper, textiles, and miscellaneous industries, with perhaps also indices for trade and transportation and agriculture.
[3] The monthly series shows a decline of 17%, the same as the change from 1930 to 1933 in annual telephone data. However, growth in the share of telephone companies covered in the monthly series (the Bell System and other large telephone companies) suggests that the coverage-constant change probably would have been a few percentage points higher.
Summary of business conditions in the United States (New York: American Telephone & Telegraph, Comptroller’s Department), monthly issues from at least Oct. 1923 to 1957. After 1930, the publication doesn’t include data on the telephone industry.
