Mary Sollars Ralls124 W. Elm Street (west side)

Mary Sollars Ralls (1876-1971) was the original telephone “operator” in Lodi. In 1887 a hand-crank telephone was installed at Ferguson’s Tailor shop where she worked as a seamstress. Mary answered the telephone when it rang and delivered messages on paper to nearby business owners.Although Mary is considered the first telephone operator in Lodi, the telephone at the tailor shop was the third one in Lodi. Ten years later, in 1897, the Sunset Telephone Exchange was established in Lodi with a total of 27 telephones, which increased to 95 the following year. By 1904 the Lodi Telephone Directory contained 200 names. In 1907 the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company purchased the Lodi Telephone Exchange.The work of the Lodi telephone operators expanded from delivering handwritten notes to a corps of women telephone operators who connected calls using manually operated switchboards. A subscriber would contact the operator by picking up the phone receiver (which activated a light on the switchboard) and ask the operator to be connected to another subscriber, which the operator did at the switchboard. At the same time, news was also exchanged between subscribers and operators — an early form of social media in Lodi!By the late 1920’s equipment had been developed to simplify making telephone calls and customers no longer spoke directly to operators to make a call. Operators could still be reached by dialing “0” and many emergencies were handled by calling the operator directly. The Lodi News-Sentinel quoted Fire Chief George Polenske, “Lots of times the telephone operator gets the call with no explanation and has to relay it … I can’t tell you how much the work of these telephone operators is appreciated. The girls are good.” (August 31, 1950)The 1950’s brought more changes and by 1958 Lodi began to use modern dialing. The work of the women telephone operators diminished and finally disappeared from Lodi.You can listen to Mary Ralls tell her story here: Mary Ralls, Lodi’s First Telephone Operator