Columbus Neighborhoods
How Two Teenagers Inspired Call Waiting
Special | 1m 12sVideo has Closed Captions
Call waiting was invented in Columbus after an engineer was unable to call home.
Did you know that a common family frustration led to one of the biggest changes in telecommunications history? Engineer Sam Kandel, who worked at Bell Labs in Columbus, solved a problem right in his own home with the invention of call waiting. When Sam couldn't call his family because his two teenage sons were constantly tying up the line, his wife, Bella, challenged him to "fix this problem."
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Columbus Neighborhoods is a local public television program presented by WOSU
Columbus Neighborhoods
How Two Teenagers Inspired Call Waiting
Special | 1m 12sVideo has Closed Captions
Did you know that a common family frustration led to one of the biggest changes in telecommunications history? Engineer Sam Kandel, who worked at Bell Labs in Columbus, solved a problem right in his own home with the invention of call waiting. When Sam couldn't call his family because his two teenage sons were constantly tying up the line, his wife, Bella, challenged him to "fix this problem."
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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This is a photograph of Sam and Bella Candel.
Sam was an engineer at Bell Labs in East Columbus.
He moved his family here from Brooklyn, New York to work for Bell Labs.
And sometimes he and his colleagues would be working late into the night, and he would try to call home, and the phone was constantly busy.
Because he had two teenage sons, they were always talking to their friends.
So his wife... Said, hey, why don't you fix this problem?
So he and his engineer friends got together and came up with call waiting, and they received the patent for that in 1963.
And there was a test market in Upper Arlington and Worthington of 200 customers to see whether or not this would be a viable option for telephone customers.
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Columbus Neighborhoods is a local public television program presented by WOSU