AT&T Operators Recall War of the Worlds Broadcast - AT&T Archives
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
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Bonus Edition Introduction by George Kupczak of the AT&T Archives and History Center
Part of an internal quarterly AT&T video newsmagazine called Directions (for DSG Directions, DSG = Data Systems Group), this video piece interviews operators from around the United States who were working during the famous War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938.
Originally aired on October 30, 1938, the radio broadcast caused panic, and at the time prompted listeners to dial "0" for operator in droves. (Or, if they lived in an area still without direct dial service, then just picking up the phone would get the operator.) The operator, circa 1938, was the first line of defense in terms of emergency information, but of course, the operators knew nothing of any alien landings. Yet they were well-trained in keeping a level head and calming customers, which, undoubtedly, came in handy at the time.
Orson Welles himself later appeared in a Bell System film, To Communicate is the Beginning.
Directions, as a series, started in 1985.
Footage Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ
The best part about that radio program “panic” was that, a very young AT&T company got to see just how effective their switchboard service was, in the midst of all that hysteria!
The big thing these days is "did u kno the war of the worlds panic never happened AT ALL???" and honestly I wish that would go away because yeah, the entire country didn't freak out and riot, but there were certainly some people who were very startled, concerned, and frightened by the broadcast.
THIS! If you actually listen to the original, there is not just one announcement. There is music, and there are ad/sponsorship breaks. The book was 40 years old by that point. Maybe one or two people called to complain, but hardly a panic.
@NetherStray Yeah, it seems like the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction. There may not have been utter pandemonium in the streets but clearly there were people who did freak out. The truth is clearly somewhere in the middle.
As far as I'm informed, there was in fact panic that day, but the problem is people obviosuly made up things and exagerated, so what really happend and what did not is hard to know now
There’s also a blurry gray area where people got doubly confused and believed they were listening to a radio broadcast about an attack by the Germans, alongside those who may have been acting out in good humor even though they hadn’t been fooled. H.G Wells himself suggested this second possibility, and Orson Welles heartily agreed, summarizing the excitement surrounding the broadcast as: “the same kind of excitement that we extract from a practical joke in which somebody puts a sheet over his head and says 'Boo!' I don't think anybody believes that that individual is a ghost, but we do scream and yell and rush down the hall. And that's just about what happened”.
There were probably some crisis actors to help make is appear true. But I would bet that all the news papers had their stories written about the "panick" days before the broadcast. Radio dramas were already a big deal back then, and the original broadcast sounded no different than the average sci-fi play.
In all of Internet-dom I have never heard a narrator more fa-a-a-abulou-u-us!
😂
🤣🤣🤣😭
The birdcage
@@nickknepper6417 "ten-jew!"
LOL
One of the greatest trolls in the history of pranks.
can i ask you about that ..I have a research
One that resulted in many deaths.
we do a little trolling
you mean a mind control experiment
@@hitlerswetpussy1736 i’ve watched other things about this radio broadcast and I don’t think the deaths actually happened. There seems to be a consensus now that this was all a hoax and the panic was made up by newspapers.
That radio show was done extremely well. It's a joy to listen to it even 85 years later. Orson Welles was a radio genius.
Welles was 23 years old at the time.
You Internet kids have got to understand that this was the first time a radio program had used a modern day approach....eye witness news...to present a story that was written in the Victorian age. Howard Koch, the scriptwriter, came up with the idea of making the Martian invasion localized in the New York/New Jersey area. The storty as it was written was too old fasioned. Many people didn't hear the opening because they were listening to Bergen and McCarthy.
Ok boomer
Now CNN does it all the time
ok
ok boomer
I appreciate your explanation, and your endurance of the extremely original and thought provoking response: "Ok boomer"
my grandfather recalls his neighbor loading his shotgun and shuting all the light off
What I've long wondered....Here's this just landed craft, creatures are emerging...so, how did the make te determinaton they were from Mars?
This was kinda surreal. But to be fair, I am high af
You mean Bell Telephone don't you? Because AT&T used to be called Bell Telephone.
The CNN of the 30's
that's too funny don't we wish CNN would announce the story you just heard is only drama before thousands of protesters end up repeating it as they attack people in the streets for believing otherwise
Right..Fox News would never over exaggerate lol
@@pulpted9937 Those aren’t exactly mutually exclusive lol
Wow I didn't know it was that bad. I heard about the panic and fear but not so bad people jumped out of windows and wanted to take the life of their families. That is truely distrubing. I use to think they over did it making Orson Wells apologize but upon hearing that I see why. I forgot to that the way he did it was making it seem like the broadcast was actually interupted. I've seen that on TV shows, they would show a news break with the actual background looking real till I see the actor.
Truly, disturbing , Welles. Why is correct spelling so difficult?
martin woyzeck why is corecting it so improtant? Try puling that stik out of your but befor tiping next time.
@@tech2868 y typ many leter wen few do trik?
@@lemonsqweezy9532
😂 So funny!! Or should I say, “so fny!!” 🤪
it's not 2019 we are clapping alien cheeks.
Not sure - we'll check it out and see what we can find
Why is At&T creating data on Mars at the request of NASA? Please tell us. The American people who are concerned and or intrigued
😂
And the Martians destroying New Jersey is a BAD THING, HOW???
Ha Ha Ha
Yeah exactly! It maybe bad, if that’s only place that’s destroyed, let’s just throw the North East in that group. But leave Pennsylvania, they have potential.
1:20 HEREZZZ WAR OF THUH WORLDZZZ! I can't.
Lol
You can't what? I don't get your comment.
And Grandma and Grandpa were at home in East Orange playing cards and listening to another station; they woke up the next morning only to read about this occurrence in the newspaper; my Mom was the same way, disaffected; i miss Grandma and Grandpa and Mom terribly; at least i have Grandma's War of the Worlds story in my memory, i played her the cassettes I had of Welles' broadcast and Grandma was pretty enrapt by the recording.
Very cool to have this footage on RUclips, because it is a rare documentation of how people themselves, not the media(like the newspapers) reacted to the now infamous radio broadcast of Orson Welles.
Thanks for uploading this from the archives.
Warm greetings from the Netherlands🇳🇱.
Why is he talking like an effeminate?
People are simple minded, they haven't changed ether...look at how people reacted to the covid nonsense, raiding stores and fighting over TP.
If facebook and twitter existed back then....ooh, oh boy.
Really cool of At&T to have, leave this up free 2 see etc. Just heard that broadcast for 1st time in 2020 Covid! 1st thing after is had a yearning 2 hear directly from people, listeners at the time...what better than those reliable operators! Still seem young @heart too.
I heard a rebroadcast as a teen and it scared me too i took some time before my logic told me it couldn't be real.
Welles was such an impressive Renaissance man.
Growing up in the 90's in a small town in East Tennessee where most people still didn't know the 9-1-1 system was available, we were taught to dial zero for the operator as well. Can zero still be considered an emergency number even today?
no, that's the operator... not a Sheriff's office dispatch for emergency crews. "as you millenial's say.... "not my job."
Old school phones 0 actually said operator at the bottom of the button.
No, no calling an operator charges you
just out of curiosity what was the salary of an AT&T operator in 1938
from what I've read, it was approximately $21 per week ~ steady work & considered good money back then during the years of the Great Depression
If it was $21 a week, that has the buying power of $360.00 in 2018. Seems like a lot in 1938 but if you say so.
@@TowGunner so abt modern minimum wage then?
@@TowGunner
Oorah 😂
You 2 do some research. The original broadcast is on youtube and the recent documentary that explains how people missed the announcements at the beginning and middle is on the PBS website. By the announcement at the end, it was too late
Shades of 2018 Hawaii missile attack false alarm terrified island state January 13 8 a.m
All prep for the upcoming fake alien invasion, Project Blue Beam. Israel just announced yesterday that aliens are real and they and the US have been in communications for years with the "Galactic Federation", lol.
THIS is my very favorite account of what happened! I love these ladies telling the stories of the panicked callers and the switchboard insanity....VERY cool.
I wonder what I would have done if I had heard this live.
history repeats istelf. 2018 new alien fake invasion.
And flat earthers, 911 truthers,etc.
2019 we clappin alien cheeks
Some are saying this year. Project Bluebeam.
What's the name of the old school song on the end where they are announcing that the broadcast was just a holiday thing. (I know weird question)
Rigo Salazar Moonglow
I can’t believe one man cause massive panic in the US back in 1938 on the Radio 📻 lol 😂
I'm not sure which is more disturbing: the introduction where George Kupczak gestures towards the little Model 555 PBX switchboard as if it were anything like a switchboard Telephone Company operators used, or the totally unrealistic state of the poor PBX itself! Nothing is connected correctly; it's clear someone who had no idea what they were doing, just randomly plugged some of the cords into jacks. Disgraceful!
Who is here because of the government faking alien invasion 2023
😅🤣😂
The whole prank has been fascinating to me since I first learned about it as a tween. And then when I got my hands on a recording of the entire fake show, I was amazed that this was even allowed to be aired. Yes, Welles told his audience that it was fiction-- but we all know that he knew that some people would be tuning in long after the start of the show. And he knew that they'd believe the alarming news bulletins.
This video was fun to see. And I love the classic spooky incidental music here, that was so often a part of The Ren and Stimpy Show back in the 1990s. It works very well here.
It would be very easy to pull something similar like this off in 2022
And thus Trolling was born
My dad told me about this when I was little so I googled it and found this video to see for myself and wow
I wonder if there was ever a movie or movies made about the stories of what happened in real life when this played out?
I guess I need to do some digging now.
I remember when Tony the Tiger helped me defeat the Dinosaurs from Pluto... I think the sugar I rush imagination might be what these AD ladies might be remembering. "Hey! Remember when instead of being low paid wage slaves we really helped save the country from those Martian Invaders? Take THAT you coin op little whipper snappers!"
Is that NPR's Bob Edwards at the very end, giving the "DSG Directions" narration?
Not me using this for home work
Brilliant, but you'd think the radio station may have been contacted.
lol ok so wait like did people commit suicide due to this?
yup
Goddamn that’s messed up.
Soooo sad, but, only people who were already very emotionally unstable would have taken their lives over this, and If not this, then something else…
is this narrator the current spokesman for the Home Depot radio commercials?
yes
I just listened/watched the rebroadcast: ruclips.net/video/WP1RCBV7axk/видео.htmlsi=kMAtAfxxo4nGJxND
What would I have done/thought if I were there that night?
These are all actresses retelling what happened not the actual eyewitness that experienced the event in 1938.
That War of the Worlds broadcast was quite the psychological operation. I wonder if 50 years from now they'll be doing a little documentary on how everyone took the bait on the current purported pandemic?
Fifty years from now their evil plan will be complete and all Free Speech will be abolished. 1984.
And today we have a new psychological operation: trump rallies.
@@akitalady You got that right... Mr. Warp Speed himself. The whole process is in place to keep us fighting each other rather than taking care of each other. It's really a supernatural level of manipulation when you think about it.
It does indeed sound like Bob Edwards.
Well..Mercury..! lol
ONE RINGY DINGY,TWO RINGY DINGY
school is totally fun
-Don P6L
Yes, really
Wow, all that clamor over the announcer that only sets up the story being told by others? Seems a bit infantile to me. Whatever. If you can't keep the ants in your pants under control long enough for the actual story (in a video less than 6½ minutes in length), then just skip to 1:27, and then make the effort to find something else to screech, cry, and bemoan, and cut down on your crack and caffeine and other amphetamine ("speed" for the mental short-hands) intake for best results.
Seems more people were listening to a competing radio stations ventriloquists program.
Wow, thought it was only MA BELL... around...
#loveit
October 30, 1938, ya nincompoop.
I wonder how true these testimonials are given the exaggerated headlines from the press at the time?
The whole idea of a mass panic didn’t even happen. I’m gonna link video of someone explaining why.
ruclips.net/video/7amqdrVO-E0/видео.html
I know that feeling. Lmfao 😂
Narrated by Stuart Smalley
I wonder any of these old-timers still alive to re-watch their own statements?
They'd have to be at least 100 years old by now or older.
@Rafael dejesus They were made to look old for atmosphere. It says plainly the interviews are from 1988.
I think some of this may be less than genuine AT&T was founded in 1983 before that it was known as SBC Communications. I think that's important I don't know why they would leave that out very curious
The company began as the American District Telegraph Company in 1878.
But the story here is greatly exaggerated and largely a fake news story spread by some papers at the time.
The book was written in 1898, so it's not like The War of the Worlds was a new story.
Yaaaaaaasss
Oh stop 👨🏼
not really
So this is where Tom Cruise's movie came from.
No, a modernised version of the HG Wells 1898 novel The War Of The Worlds. The Orson Welles radio drama was based on that novel as well
That version was stupid..Watch the original from 1953, with Gene Barry and Ann Robinson
@@lawrenceparker5438 , better than that, read the novel or listen to Jeff Wayne's 1978 orchestral adaptation.
“...when a thild went mithing , or a loved one wath thick or inthured ...”
I bet his loafers last forever.
gaydar goin off here
this was so phony and self serving
That's fucked up they didn't at least announce it was a fictional broadcast before hand. Sounds like a twisted social experiment.
Actually they did
They did, though most people were not listening.
Not only before hand, they also did it in the middle of the broadcast.
Lmao ur stupid
@@filmztutorialz5254 They did so at the beginning when radios had to warm up before tuning in and most people were listening to another station. The weekly plays usually had a short intermission after half an hour but on this occasion they were 40 mins in before they did so, meaning even some of their more regular listeners were caught out. After that was the monologue by Professor Pearson played by Orson Welles but by then some level of fear and panic had set in.
Gay bomber baby
Mass formation psychosis