You're about to see a few clips from the 19 fifties about the phone, the phone.

It was our cell phone back then, when I was growing up, it was something new.

The previous generation didn't have a phone on the wall where you could actually talk to your friends without seeing them.

We were addicted to the phones, particularly girls.

Teenage girls.

They would talk for hours on the phone on the phone was in the kitchen on a wall, so it wasn't private.

And the phone companies aren't stupid.

They watching this saying, Wow, these people are talking for hours, even though it was a five cent coal or a 10 cent Cole.

Maybe a couple of dollars a month, and virtually everybody in the middle class had a phone, so you saw it on the wall.

Then they began to make the cord longer.

Why not?

He could hide a little more, and eventually they come up with a second phone, which could be in the bedrooms.

He could close the door, and then they came up with this design, the princess phone.

By the time I was in high school, and the Princess phone was small.

It had a light when you picked it up, the light went on, and we all use the phone enormously.

And it fascinated the older generation who thought it was both good and bad.

So you're forced going to see a clip of a boy in the late 19 fifties talking on the phone as part of a psychological experiment with professional psychologists are evaluating.

What is this kid really doing?

You're going to hear the language of the time, which I think is fascinating.

I wish I had 100 of these interviews on the second clip I'm going to show is a portion of a film I made for Life magazine for their 50th anniversary Life magazine.

In every single home at that time, every middle class home every week, with a photograph on the cover and lots of pictures with lots of articles, everybody read it, and many show teenagers in various activities having a soda, doing the hair, putting on a ring and on the phone.

Those photographs were photographed by Nina Leen.

She was a great photographer, fascinated by teenage behavior.

So in this little section, you're going to see her analysis of why she took these pictures and what she saw when she saw these kids on the phone.

Now you have the cell phone, Different era.

I don't know that the traditional phone means anything.

Like what it meant back then with Instagram and all the other communications tools.

But for us, then 19 fifties, the phone was a miraculous way to separate from the family and the parents and just talk.

Hello, Sally.

Hi.

What?

You know, I'm fine.

And you?

That's good.

No, I just called to see how things are.

Yeah, things were kind of dead around here too.

I just thought I call up and we could talk for a little while.

Well, if you've got some big deal project on or something.

Okay.

We'll talk for about five minutes, then what you got to say for yourself?

I don't know.

Yeah.

Been drinking many soldiers lately.

Why?

Why?

You flipped?

I never said anything like that.

I did not.

I didn't mention ciggies.

Name all I said.

What?

Have you been met drinking many sodas lately?

What I like Have you been seeing sea?

I mean, it's up to you if you want to take chances.

I can't guarantee my presence in the future.

It was you that didn't want to go steady.

That's right.

Well, I told you you didn't have to tell your parents.

Yeah.

All right.

We'll talk about it later tonight.

Tom is pretty sophisticated and sure of himself.

He knows what he wants to do, and he knows what he's about.

He feels pretty much at ease when he works with his girl to persuade her that she should go steady, which is very important to him right now.

Later on, he'll be concerned about the girl he's going to marry, and he'll be thinking in terms of the kind of a person he could enjoy and be with the rest of his life.

Lucy, starting at the teenage, has another kind of problem.

And we lookin at her here, talking with her mother about her difficulties with the same telephone.

The thing to do if you're worried about this phone business, is to try to think of a way of getting the better of it.

What sort of way?

Well, why don't you pretend that you ever calls you was Tom.

I have a feeling that you're talking to your brother.

I don't think that would work.

I just run out of words again.

Oh, well, it may not work, but there's no harm in trying, is there?

Well, maybe we'll think of something better.

Nobody's gonna call me up anyway.

Shall I answer it if you want to.

It's not for me anyway.

I see.

Yeah, she's here.

Just a month.

Lucy.

Phone, huh?

Oh, hi, Edward.

Oh, I'm fine.

How are you?

How?

Student council.

Oh, you're not on student council.

Well, did you watch television last night?

Oh, what'd you see?

Was it funny?

Oh, well, what did you call about Edward?

I mean, I'm sort of in the middle of something.

Oh, Jane Patterson.

Sure.

Uh, it's Crest View 5111 It's right.

You're welcome.

Goodbye.

They took my word that I will not take pictures, which they object.

They trust with me.

The teenagers trusted me.

This is why I got along with them.

Then they showed me the newer thing.

They weren't afraid that I will criticize them and say it shouldn't be like that.

Or don't do that or whatever.

You know, This'll is a young teenage suburbia, kids sucking away us at sodas and the little girl in the background looking out of the corner of her eye at the boy that she's charming.

I don't think Nina Leen was was touched by anybody else in this particular get inside the minutia of how people looked and behaved in all levels of American society, there were.

Sometimes people were not aware off things like in this.

Um, it said.

I think it was a teenage girl story or teenage bono teenage girls that in spite and got the captain ist I ordered different two minute in it.

Now I think Teenage girl story.

They were twins, boy and girl, and he knew I was waiting for them, you know, to take pictures.

And he said She's on the phone.

I went there and there she was sitting and there were not one minute where she kept her position to say in one foot, went back one down, one.

She changed the position.

I mean, it was unbelievable.