A unique experiment 100 years ago may well have been the first ever tube announcement. It was not popular.
The first escalator on the underground opened at Earl's Court station on 4 October 1911. It was a huge success and the moving stairways were soon rolled out to other stations.
Very quickly, it was recognised that rules and etiquettes were needed to help with the smooth running. The "stand on the right" rule was in place from the very beginning. But then, as now, not everybody paid attention.
Gramophone orders on the Underground
In 1921 London Underground tried a unique — and not particularly welcome — experiment. An "Automatic Stentophone" was installed at the base of the escalators in Oxford Circus in a bid to keep passengers flow smooth and to enforce the rules.
The Stentophone (a jazzed up gramophone powered by compressed air) would periodically bark orders at those descending the moving stairs.
"Keep moving please!"
"Let others pass on the left"
"If you must stand, stand on the right!"
As a newspaper report from the time wryly notes, "It would cry out "This way please! Plenty of room inside!", forever. Whether the travelling public, long suffering and patient, will stand the thing forever, remains to be seen."
It was ridiculed in the press as an "instrument of torture" and off-putting to people of "rural habit". One writer thought it might be better employed as a way of pumping jazz music into public places, or as an automatic guide for directing people to bus stops.
The system reportedly drew many curses from passengers. "Most men," wrote one journalist, "feel the need to answer back. And it makes them so ridiculous. Even a regimental sergeant-major would blush to be caught swearing at a gramophone."
It was a first taste for Londoners of the automatic PA systems that would one day become a ubiquitous part of public life. It was also short-lived. After this brief dalliance in public address, the machine seems to have been removed from Oxford Circus, never to return.
The escalator gramophone may not have helped ease passenger flow, or won over embattled Londoners, but it can be seen as the grandfather of that more successful automatic recording: Mind the Gap!
