in 1967 the cost of making a 10-minute
daytime telephone call from new york to
los angeles over 80 and t would have
cost you 5.50
and yet if you got a pair of these
devices you could have communicated over
the same distance for the same amount of
time but for just 10 cents so what are
they and why didn't they take off well
you're about to find out
[Music]
the system is called the mail call and
it was introduced by smith corona in
november 1967 in the us
it was a two-way communication system
albeit one with a very significant delay
before you could hear the other side of
the conversation because this really was
voicemail you recorded your voice onto a
letter pack and sent it off in the mail
the person at the receiving end would
play it back on their equipment and then
reply back to you in the same manner the
mail call sister was conceived with
lofty goals hoping in time to replace a
significant proportion of written
letters with recordings on letter packs
now if they look familiar it's because
this design of cartridge was also sold
as play tapes a pre-recorded music
format that enjoyed fleeting popularity
between 1967 and 69. i've made a video
about the play tape back in 2016 so if
you're interested in learning more about
that there's a link in the video
description now the price benefits i
mentioned during the introduction of
using a 10-minute letter pack over a
10-minute telephone conversation
breakdown as follows a letter pack
weighs 1.4 ounces so to post it
coast-to-coast in the us in 1967 costs
five cents plus another five cents so 10
cents in total whereas a daytime
telephone call for 10 minutes on a t in
1967 cost 5.50 plus tax if we put those
into context and put them through the
inflation calculator the postage will
cost you 73 cents nowadays whereas the
telephone call would cost you 40.36
but that cost benefit is significantly
offset by the fact that to use the
service you have to buy two mail call
devices at less than seventy dollars a
pair batteries not included so the
advertisements more emphasize the
benefits of hearing someone rather than
reading a letter from them now i've got
a new old stock mail call here the box
is a little bit beaten up but the
contents are untouched in the bottom
here you get your first letter pack
which is a three minute one and then
i've got a wrist strap in this section
here now i'm not sure whether there's
supposed to be instructions in here i'd
imagine they would be they're not
included in my box but you can see i've
got the mail call device in the bottom
here it's a really sleek looking thing
this we've got the speaker in the top
there a switch in the bottom to move
between play and record and off modes
volume control and then the record
switch here which can be slid up or
pushed down to activate the recording
on the back you can see the battery
compartment there's a headphone socket
at the bottom there and then the
cartridges go in the top here just below
the loop for that wrist strap
the letter pack is an endless loop tape
cartridge the tape inside is an eighth
of an inch across which is the same
width as the tape in a phillips compact
cassette but it's run at twice the speed
at 3.75 inches per second and it only
contains one track of audio across the
whole width of the tape and this is
different to the play tapes which use
the width of the tape to fit two tracks
on there however you can play back a
letter pack in a play tape machine as
long as you turn the dial to the stereo
position which plays channels one and
two at the same time and just like an
8-track cartridge of the same age the
cushioned pads in the bottom had
perished and fallen off so i've replaced
those with some new sponge cushions
okay so i've got my machine here let me
demonstrate the process to you the first
thing you have to do before you start
recording is decide how long you're
going to be talking for do you want to
use a three a six or a ten minute
cartridge well i've only got a three
minute one here so that's the one i'm
going to use so you just pop it into the
back of the machine turn the dial to the
record position and then you've got two
choices this black button on the front
here if you hold it down it records and
when you let go it stops or you can
slide it into the upward position and
that will record continuously
so you start recording by talking into
the device into the speaker at the top
which functions as a microphone when
it's in the record mode but after a
while you might start to lose track as
to how long you've actually recorded on
it there's no tape counter you can't see
the tape itself so you can't be sure how
far you are into it how long you've got
left
and of course that sounds on an endless
loop cartridge like you're in danger of
re-recording over the thing you've just
recorded well it stops you from doing
that because at the end of the tape once
every loop there's a bit of foil on it
which connects two parts of the
mechanism in here which stops the
machine from running any further and it
beeps at you so you know you've reached
the end of the tape
[Music]
so at that point you take the cartridge
out you pop it in the post and send it
off to the person at the other end
the person at the other end can listen
back to it of their machine and then
they can re-record over the cartridge
and send it back to you
and so on it continued or at least that
was the idea so why didn't these things
take off well as far as i can see it
there were a number of reasons the first
one being this wasn't really doing
anything new it was just repackaging an
existing idea into a sleeker format
if there were any advantages to it they
were mostly to the manufacturers of the
letter pack because you're now relying
on their cartridges
people have been recording messages and
sending them to each other for many
years on these little three inch reels
of tape which would be playable on
pretty much any open reel recorder
these things were even supplied with
boxes which you could write the name and
address of the person you were sending
it to and pop a stamp at the top
now of course these things have to be
wound onto an open reel recorder maybe
this is more convenient because you can
just slot it straight in but really
anyone with a open reel recorder is
quite happy to to do that it becomes
second nature
this thing has a lot of disadvantages
you cannot rewind it you can't fast
forward it you can't see how much tape
you've used
so
if you did mishear something that was on
the tape perhaps somebody said something
you couldn't quite make it out well on a
10 minute tape you'll have to wait 10
minutes for it to come back around again
whereas with something like this you
could just do a quick rewind
additionally it wasn't just the open
reel tapes that the male core letter
pack was facing in 1967 in the us the
phillips compact cassette had recently
been launched as well and that offered
all the benefits of the mail call as far
as easy loading into a machine but with
all the benefits of the reel to reels
that you could rewind and fast forward
them and you could use the machines for
playing other things as well as your
voice recordings music for example so
the idea of buying two new machines just
to send letters on cartridges to people
didn't really appeal and besides which
to put more nails in the coffin any
tapes i've found that people have sent
to each other back in the day were sent
internationally because international
calls were even more expensive than long
distance ones within the us an advert
from the time here says that for the
first three minutes it's only twelve
dollars to call internationally so let's
put that in the inflation calculator
eighty-eight dollars for three minutes
so you can understand why someone would
perhaps send a tape to a relative in
another country rather making a
telephone conversation and if you wanted
to do that well of course you couldn't
do it with the mail call system because
they only sold these in the us you could
perhaps send your relative a mail call
abroad but it's much easier just to send
them what are the formats that they
could use on their existing equipment so
with all that said it's hard now to
understand how somebody in 1967 thought
that this could have been a successful
product but maybe it's just one of those
things that was so far down the
production line it was easier to release
it than to can the whole thing now
looking at my two serial numbers there's
16 600 and odd between them so it looks
like they made quite a few of these and
looking at the controls on these two
models here looks like they went through
a revision as well we've gone from play
to listen and record to talk on the
later model but i can't see that this
was anything other than an expensive
failure
the story of the male core letter pat
reminds us that predicting the future is
a tricky business the people behind this
thought that in the future the
traditional letters sent between friends
and family would be replaced by a new
technology and they were right it's just
that new technology wasn't tape sent
through the post it was ultimately
electronic mail but of course they
weren't to know that at the time however
i think the idea behind this was pretty
much doomed from the start due to human
nature even to this day people don't
like leaving answer phone messages or
voicemails they'd much rather speak to
somebody live so a system based around
delayed communication was probably never
likely to be a success but whilst the
idea was a flop i've got nothing but
praise for these objects they're
beautiful examples of late 1960s space
age design looking forward to the future
and from certain angles it looks a
little bit like a game boy with the
cartridge sticking up in the back there
but perhaps the reason i'm thinking
space age is because of the colors they
remind me so much of 2001 a space
odyssey this one looks just like one of
the spacesuit colours used in that film
and i don't think this would have looked
out of place as a prop in that movie
perhaps in the hilton hotel or the space
station
but just like some parts of that film
were looking to the future as an
extension of the present so you've got
things like
pan am spaceships and bell video
telephone systems this was very much a
1960s idea of what the future was going
to look like and unfortunately they got
it wrong but i hope you've enjoyed
having a look at this here today and
that's it for the moment as always
thanks for watching
so
[Music]
you