We’ve spoken before about how much Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish inventor of the telephone, really didn’t care much for his own invention. He felt that the device would stifle personal relationships. He’s not alone. Even (especially?) in the modern age, people don’t like talking on the phone as much as doing a whole bunch of other stuff on the devices. Today, it seems that using the cell phone to talk to someone else is about the last thing we wish to do. Even when there were such things as “home phones,” there was still a group of people who disliked the device and saw it as a personal intrusion. Others felt that, rather than feeling connected by the phone, some even felt, like Bell, that it was rapidly replacing face-to-face meetings between people. And that feeling of separation was found by some to be increased when people were calling businesses–businesses who often depend on face-to-face interactions to establish trust with a customer.

Take the case of Alfred Levy. In 1962, Levy was not only a business and factory owner, but he was also somewhat of an inventor, a tinkerer, and he brought that mentality to the issue of making business phone conversations more personal and more, well, connected. He found that potential customers who called his factory would often become impatient when they were being assisted. He realized that the impatience of his phone customers didn’t exist so much when customers were standing in front of him. Part of the issue was that, since the business was often quite busy and calls came into a switchboard, clients were frustrated when the office operator would put them on hold to transfer their calls to the appropriate department.

Levy thought about how to resolve this issue. What could he do to make sure the customers on the other end of the phone line would be handled within a proper and appropriate time-frame by first the operator and then by the particular office that their calls were being transferred to? The answer to Levy’s situation came to him quite by accident, and it had to do with the construction of his factory, of all things. And this lucky accident helped to alleviate Levy’s issue of his customers being frustrated while waiting to be served.

You see, the frame for Levy’s factory was steel. If you saw it, you’d think it looked like one of those steel frame warehouse structures that have aluminum siding on a concrete slab. And the building had been constructed right next door to an AM radio station. Turns out that, in 1962, a loose wire in the factory’s phone system had been accidentally allowed to touch one of the building’s steel frame girders. And that steel frame of Levy’s factory acted as a giant antenna for the AM station. When people called Levy’s business, and the company operator would put them on hold to transfer the call, it seems that the caller was able to clearly hear the music that the AM station was playing at the moment.

Thus, out of sheer luck and chance (and poor wiring), Alfred Levy is credited with inventing on hold music, an invention which he patented in 1966.