History: Kellogg Field Phone (World War I)

Ask people familiar with telecommunications history and they’ll tell you that the first text message sent from a mobile phone was sent in 1993. But there was  a phone that sent text messages more than 75 years before that! Amazing, bu the Kellogg Switchboard Supply Company field phone, model 1917 (and we’ve also seen model EE 3) provided American soldiers in WWI a portable telephone and telegraph communications in a single box.

Cased in wood and carried by a leather shoulder strap, the battery powered phone could be carried into trenches or to base camps to provide communications. The phone also has a hand crank generator called a magneto for an additional power source.

US infantry soldiers would deploy a twisted pair of wires from one location to another. After the wires were connected to a field phone on each end, information about enemy strength and location of enemy forces, ranging information for artillery and other communications were possible. Telegraph codes could be sent as far as 20 miles away, and voice communications would travel a somewhat shorter distance. Soon battlefields across Europe were strewn with wires.

Thanks to MuMoH blog (Museum of Mobility history) for this lay ax to root. Being busy with modern phone systems, IP-PBX, VoIP phones and digital communication systems  it’s great to know the story of communication (at least with such brief assart) – young people should learn basics, twisted pairs, etc. when they will touch “dial” on their iPhones screens (most of people even don’t think what happens when they dial the number and push dial – it works and nothing else is vital).