Based on my experience the last few days with Time Warner digital cable & internet service, they could benefit by upgrading to the Hilton system.

Wow Kevin, how strange! The FISA threads got me interested in old telephone infrastructure the other night. Check out this old film about switching to direct dialing in 1927 and a training video for operators:

"Your New Dial Telephone Service"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QusX3JeUxaY
"Operator Toll dialing: dialing"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSV3nPxUgjA

Interestingly enough, this is the exact system Paris Hilton uses to keep track of the guys she sleeps with.

It didn't fit (easily) on a desktop, but that system was a lot nicer, wasn't it? I can just picture Judy Holiday in there, somewhere.

I don't know. Now, I can go online and see the availability of every hotel, every chain, everywhere. At a glance. The internets are good for something!

Their system back then for ordering in-room porn was just as complicated.

Of course we've progressed! Now we don't need those troublesome American employees, having replaced them with computers and cheap offshore labor.

You say the service isn't as good? Maybe, but so what? Profits are up, and so is executive compensation! And *that's* all that matters.

The ad copy text reads an awful like one of those recent patent applications, seeking to get an exclusive lock on a concept that seems totally straightforward, without having to build something that actually does it!

Hey, isn't that room 641A of a large telecommunications building in downtown SF?

Interestingly enough, this is the exact system Paris Hilton uses to keep track of the guys she sleeps with.

and the only reason you care is that even though it's a long list you still aren't on it?

Of course, even after reading that you were quoting verbatim from a 1958 print ad, I immediately started clicking on the underlined parts to see if they were cool links to other ads

or something

I need a day off or twelve

FYI, that big board that the woman is putting the prices on was called "the rack." To this day, hotels refer to the base room rental rate as "the rack rate" even though, because of computer screens, no one has used an actual rack in over 25 years.

Cheers

Can't we just rewrite the kicker and cutline to this:

NSA spying: Don't worry, folks, this is just your down-home, people-next-door terrorism fighters, intercepting your calls immediately, around the clock.

optical weenie >"Hey, isn't that...downtown SF?"

The word repurposing comes to mind...

"Liars are usually easily discredited; it's the truth-tellers who need to be destroyed." - Joshua Marshall

danno - Thanks for the info about the "rack rate". I've seen that phrase recently while doing internet searches for anecdotal reports of experiences with Hotels.com. The term was never explained; however several people found that the "rack rate" from the hotel was better than what they initially committed to with hotels.com. The problem is that once you book with them, you are instantly billed and cannot take advantage of on-site discounts you may be offered by the local hotel management.

As far as electronic eavesdropping goes,
remember folks: They're not trying to find out what you are doing wrong, they are trying to find out what you are doing right!

1958 - Hmmm - Just a couple of days before they began wearing Saris.

Photoshopping the Hilton pic to NSA spying with this result.

Or click the link to this blog post.

Sigh. Reminds of the good old days in the 70s at Sperry Univac when we had a huge room full of hundreds of ladies, well paid and many good looking, doing wire core memory, component mounting, etc. Virtually everyone who worked there was in a good mood and unharried. Seems almost like Eden now.

Danno: Thanks! I've always wondered where "rack rate" came from. I guess I've never wondered enough to, you know, actually look it up or anything, but it's still nice to know.

Advantage: blog commenters!

These women don't appear to be Indian. Maybe that system actually worked.

After that image, I half expected a blistering attack on the patriarchy for allowing/expecting women to work as much/more/less than men. Or something. Too much Pandagon, I guess.

The world changed not too long after 1958 for the Hilton ladies. If you can believe it, American Airlines handled its reservations in a similar way, although as early as 1952 AA used magnetic storage (but still a manual front end process) instead of large rolodexes (the AA equivalent to the "rack"). In 1953 IBM and AA started planning the successor, an all-electronic system, loosely based on the SAGE system IBM created for the U.S. Air Force.

By 1960 the new AA/IBM system, called SABRE, went online. By 1964, just 6 years after this 1958 Hilton picture, SABRE handled 100% of AA's reservations. DELTAMATIC followed almost immediately (for Delta Airlines), and computerized reservation systems swept through the travel industry rapidly. By 1972 Hilton implemented its NORTH CRS (later HILSTAR in 1999). Not so coincidentally AA and Delta were days apart (AA first, Delta second) when they introduced the first frequent flyer programs in the early 1980s, just after deregulation.

Those systems were/are so good they're still running today, with some enhancements of course but basically with the same underlying architecture. SABRE is still Sabre, and DELTAMATIC is still around, now part of Worldspan. The system IBM sells (vastly updated and even 64-bit) is now called z/TPF. TPF handles about 92% of the world's travel reservations; racks, near 0%.

Hmm.

I count six people there, probably all getting reasonable paychecks. Those six have been replaced by a computer, a phone network, and hefty profits being diverted to Paris - the girl, not the city.

Service?

That depends on how well the customer can use a computer. The skills have been outsourced to the customer.

But I will bet the phone bills have gone down.

Danno and Timothy

Thank you so much for the historical perspective!

It was the presence of repetitive office machinery (like typewriters) which first allowed women a place in the paid workforce, in the 1880s. The Hilton board is merely a step on from that.

Throughout history, when a woman enters a profession, there has been a subsequent downgrading and commoditisation in the status of that profession. It happened to secretaries, then, and it is happening in medicine, now.

Interesting to see if it happens to fighter pilots.

Interestingly enough, this is the exact system Paris Hilton uses to keep track of the guys she sleeps with.

and the only reason you care is that even though it's a long list you still aren't on it?

Posted by: spacebaby on August 14, 2007 at 3:08 PM | PERMALINK

Hey! Painfully true. I haven't won the lottery yet, either, but I can still hope.

In the 40's the airline reservation systems worked in a similar way, except they had a huge hanger with workers on scaffolds marking the status of each flight on a huge blackboard ,as agents on the hanger floors, equipped with binoculars to read the board took reservations over the phone.

My brain processed this post in it's own uniquely paranoid way. What I saw was:

ONE CALL TELLS US ALL

with the image a glimpse of the NSA (circa 1958, of course).

So much snark about the automating of cumbersome and error-prone repetitive office tasks. Sheesh!

My reaction to this ad was that I was amazed that something so complex was needed to manage reservations at only 33 hotels! Wow!

There is no way a system like this would work today because every hotel chain has waaay to many locations. And how often do you know in advance exactly what hotel you want to stay in? Sorry, folks, but automated systems are really a whole lot better. You think those six nice ladies never made a mistake? You think you didn't have to spend a long time on the phone to confirm your reservation?

I admit that I'm a little defensive about this because I design and build business automation systems for a living and I'm pretty proud of what I do. We take a crazy-quilt system that all exists in someone's head and requires 10 people flipping paper all day long and regularize it into something that a lot of people understand but that requires much less dull labor. As far as I know, our systems have not cost anyone their job--they've just made people's jobs easier and more predictable. And, yeah, they've saved our customers (the big businesses) some money. But, hey, we've all got to work for a living, don't we?

So, meaningless "advances" are not a new concept. That was your point, right?

I mean, I can't much imagine calling up to get a reservation at the San Francisco Hilton (in 1958), finding nothing available, and then saying, "Hmm. Well, can you check the one in Omaha?"

With the severely minor exception of two Hilton hotels servicing the same metropolitan area - in 1958 when there were only 33 of them! - this seems like a meaningless endeavor for the consumer. On the other hand, it did save Hilton costs of employing reservation clerks at each of the 33 hotels (I imagine those six ladies could handle the peaks of reservation calls for all 33 hotels, for a 82% savings!) ... but marketing it as a customer advantage is ... well, about what I'd expect today, to be honest.