ABSTRACT
Fade in. Dateline, 1971. A rotary dial and a touch-tone keypad, unattached to telephones, mounted like modern art in the white cube. A dial tone breaks the silence, conjuring two hands. In under ve seconds a manicured white male hand presses seven buttons on the keypad, then eight more seconds pass while an identical hand continues to turn and release the dial, waiting each time for it to return to its resting position before turning it again. Once the dialer nishes, a narrator announces in mock-solemn baritone: “It’s the greatest thing since the wheel: touch-tone calling.” To promote rotary dialing AT&T had produced instructional lms lasting twenty minutes; this commercial justied the upgrade to touch-tone calling with a quick demo and sarcastic tagline. The visual presentation is straightforward and to the point: pushing buttons on a touch-tone keypad is faster than rotary dialing. The ad’s tenor, meanwhile, demonstrates how AT&T wanted its customers to approach the new interface. Describing touch-tone calling as “the greatest thing since the wheel” is a play on the dial, and touch-tone was the telephone’s rst makeover since callers began dialing the rotary “wheel.” But the narrator’s tone is dismissive rather than celebratory, signaling to viewers that, actually, touch-tone is no big deal.
