Darknet Diaries · Tuesday, July 7, 2026
The podcast begins with a story about an undertaker named Stroker in 1888 who, due to a rival diverting his business, invented the first automatic telephone switch. This innovation bypassed the need for manual operator connections and was driven by a desire to overcome human-driven interference in call routing.
“And what this undertaker figured out is that the lady who was working as the phone operator her husband was trying to start an undertaker business. So any time somebody would call asking for the undertaker she would just connect them to her husband's phone.”
“So he set out to work to build an automatic way to connect calls from one person to another without the need of an operator.”
“And this was the first telephone switch ever invented in 1889.”