The other day, while staying in Mount Dora, Fla., I bought an old phone I saw in the window of an antique store. I couldn't resist it, because it was in pristine condition and actually worked. The woman who owns the store uses a retired telephone engineer to fix up every phone she sells. I was so sold on this particular model that I took out my wallet and returned to Illinois the proud owner of an 85-year-old Stromberg Carlson candlestick telephone. When I got back to my home office I put it on the desk, plugged it in, and imagined I was Humphrey Bogart in "The Maltese Falcon" about to make a call to Mary Astor. There's something about candlestick phones that strikes a chord with me because they are so much part of the history of America. This got me thinking about today's industry, so I retrieved my brand new Nokia PCS phone and set it next to its early ancestor. What I saw in front of me were two telephones built at the beginning of two different centuries.
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