Talk:Hush-A-Phone

Great job. What do you think about a DYK nomination?
Thank you for writing this article. Overall I think you did a great job. I know a little bit about this topic from Tim Wu's book The Master Switch, and I added a paragraph about Hush-A-Phone to the Leo Beranek article awhile ago, so I was thrilled to see a full article about the company.

Have you considered nominating this article to appear in the "Did you know" section of Wikipedia's home page? This is a space for articles that have recently been created or expanded. More information is available at WP:DYK. I'd be happy to nominate the article for you if you'd like, but you'd have to decide within the next five days, as there's a time limit on when new articles can be nominated.

One issue that I see with the article is that there's some original research involving the use of classified ads. Generally we don't use primary sources to draw conclusions that aren't in those sources. We try to summarize what reliable secondary sources say about a topic. So, we generally wouldn't draw conclusions about a company's health or activity level by looking at its advertisements - we'd rely on a historian or a newspaper reporter to do that and then summarize their conclusions. However, overall I think it's a great contribution to the encyclopedia. Please let me know if I can be of any assistance.GabrielF (talk) 02:15, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your comments! I am new to Wikipedia and am eager to learn the culture, so your observations are very helpful. Please feel free to nominate my article for the DYK, I'd be honored! About the original research -- I'll plan to go back through and edit the article to honor this principle.  I will try to find secondary sources so as not to lose content, and/or just delete the stuff that's my own analysis of the classified ads.  I do have another question: I wanted to include some images of the Hush-A-Phone in the article, and I found some images on a personal blog and a museum's web site. I wrote the site owners to ask if I could use their images, but if they do write and give permission, that's probably not enough, is it? I read Manual_of_Style/Images and it looks like (if they are ok with it) I could ask the image owner to pick GNU or CC license, then upload their images to Wikimedia, and fill out the description page, then re-use the image in the Hush-A-Phone article?  Thanks again for your kind words. Sharp-shinned.hawk (talk) 14:10, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay in responding. I created the DYK nomination. You can view it here Template_talk:Did_you_know. I chose a "hook" (the sentence to be displayed on the home page), but you're welcome to propose an alternative. It just needs to be under 200 characters and it should be something that is specifically cited to a source in the article. GabrielF (talk) 23:06, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
 * , thanks for doing this! I like the hook you chose.  I appreciate the nomination and your guidance. Sharp-shinned.hawk (talk) 13:46, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
 * , thanks for doing this! I like the hook you chose.  I appreciate the nomination and your guidance. Sharp-shinned.hawk (talk) 13:46, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Is this original research?
On one hand, this paragraph just seems to present bald facts, on the other, one might question why it's included unless the reader is meant to form conclusions. So: is it original research? Are some of the facts more relevant to leave in than others?
 * Some time between October, 1927 and December, 1929, Hush-A-Phone moved from its Madison Avenue location to about seven blocks southwest to 43 W. 16th Street.[21][22] Although one more advertisement appeared in 1929 (December 8, just in time for the holidays), Hush-A-Phone was absent from the Times until July 1934, when a four-line, text-only advertisement appeared.[23] Advertisements in 1936 noted a new model "for French phone" was out,[24] and in October, 1937 the Hush-A-Phone company was exhibiting again, this time showing a 200-feet elastic telephone wire at the National Business Show.[25] However, the four-line classified advertisements continued to be the company's public appearances after the show, appearing between ads for cigars and baldness cures, until 1942, when their product appeared in photographs in a few ads run by houseware store Lewis & Conger,[26][27] In 1944 the company noted "Models for E-1 and F-1 Handset Phone; Pedestal Phone; Switchboard and Dictating Machines".[28]

Sharp-shinned.hawk (talk) 16:08, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Suspect not - a list of facts without conclusions is ok. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:10, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Did it work??
An interesting article, but the big question not even mentioned. Was it just snake oil?Baska436 (talk) 03:50, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree that more information about the actual Hush-a-Phone design and function should be provided. A significant amount of this article seems to be focused on the frequent relocations of the company office rather than the product. Packlad (talk) 10:38, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I would have liked to know how the device worked. Also, the significance of the case as legal precedent is alluded to but never explained. Peezy1001 (talk) 11:20, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree. Did it work, and if so, how? One can make guesses from the picture alone but more info would be helpful. Also, I too don't see the relevance of how often the company moved or the distance from one office to the next. 129.219.155.89 (talk) 18:12, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

1922 ad for a similar product
The January 28, 1922 issue of American Stationer and Office Supplier (vol. 90, no. 4) has an ad on p. 2 for a "whispering mouthpiece" from Colytt Laboratories in Chicago (at the bottom right of the page). Roches (talk) 22:41, 5 May 2015 (UTC)