A reference to ‘speaking tubes’ appeared during a look at old real estate listings around Lafayette Square. Being from split level suburbia, I’d never heard of them.
When I was a kid, a couple of my friends had intercom systems in their homes. It was a 60’s kind of thing. I distrusted anything someone’s mom might be listening in on, but appreciated the electronic marvelousness of a thing that could pipe the news or music throughout the house. Another thing that characterized these systems was lack of functionality. When we tried to test them out they seldom worked right; or at least in a straight-forward way. So we’d mostly just mess with the buttons and pretend it was something else.
Voice tubes for communication trace back to about 1850. A number of patents were issued for improvements through the 1890s. Naval vessels employed them well into the 1950s. Perhaps you remember all the yelling done on USS Caine by Humphrey Bogart in 1954. The bridge commonly barked orders to the engine room. Getting someone “on the horn” originated from voice tube communications.
During a kitchen project here, we encountered a hollow copper tube, about an inch in diameter with a flared end. It protruded through a brick wall. Turns out it was part of a speaking tube system. These were fairly common in Lafayette Square homes from the 1870s through 1890s.
How it worked
Affluent homeowners needed a way to summon help from level to level of their homes. The kitchen and servants quarters were set off from the living area. An early method was to run a string from one room, to ring a bell in another. Hard to convey any specific information by bells without a lot of ringing. The introduction of speaking tubes was a big improvement. A summoner would put his/her lips to the valve on one end, and blow. This created a sound like a tea kettle at the other end.
It would alert the servant (or whoever). That person would twist the small handle, opening the valve, and then begin conversing when the other person put an ear to their end.
The effective range of a tube made of copper or galvanized metal is about 300 feet. This would easily cover most of a Lafayette Square mansion’s needs. The only drawback is that one needed separate lines to each room as the voice was strictly a two-way proposition.
Marie Davies of the Lehmann House kindly provided photos of her system, top of the line for the time:
Telephones ruined all this sport, for speaking tubes and intercom systems alike. I’m not sure what the hygienic trade off of speaking tubes in the age of coronavirus is, either. It would effectively distance people who would then be blowing directly toward each other. The iPhone is definitely hard to beat for room to room contact, though the pre-Branson Tony Orlando prescribed another method with this hit from way back in 1971.
Hmm…that was supposed to be Knock Three Times, a real crowd-pleaser in its day. Technical difficulties – sorry.
Research Sources
Real estate ad from St. Louis Post-Dispatch April, 1892
Scientific American blog; Jennifer Oullette; July 23, 2012 https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/can-you-hear-me-now-sound-technology-of-the-19th-century/
Wikipedia entry for speaking tubes; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_tube
An interesting discussion thread at Old House Web; http://www.oldhouseweb.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6133
The Caine Mutiny photo from Columbia Pictures; 1954. Highly recommended, and the strawberries were delicious.
Image of servant bells from Paul Black for clearcom.com
Good work. Are dumb waiters next? On house tour once, I tried to get a friend of mine to stand in the back hall in a tuxedo with a tray in his hand and a vacant expression on his face. My idea of course was to point out to all the tourists our dumb waiter, original to the house. He declined the invitation.
Perhaps he resented the redundancy; dumb waiter and dumber waiter.
Fascinating information!