I am not normally terribly interested in the workings of the telephone system.  Despite the fact that my significant other runs the phones (among other things) at a local Department of Energy facility, I find it hard to concern myself with them.  My telephone of choice at home is a black desktop rotary I bought when AT&T was dissolved and we had to buy phones instead of renting them.  I have a cell phone (grudgingly) only because my car is nearly as old as my rotary telephone.

Yesterday, it came to my attention that there was a massive Verizon wireless outage that affected both Virginia and North Carolina.  This morning, I heard that the first transcontinental telephone call occurred on today’s date in 1915.  When I looked it up in Wikipedia (I know, shame on me), I saw right next to that item that rotary phone service began only 4 years later, in 1919, in Norfolk, Virginia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_telephone).  Clearly, the universe was trying to tell me something.   Read more