Some time ago I wrote a short article about Piet 'Matras' van Zyl who worked nights in the original telephone exchange in Hermanus. Karen Klein asked for details so I decided to post the article again, with a photo. However, I cannot confirm the address in Marine Drive where he lived with his wife. ‘RING, TELEPHONE, RING’: A SHORT HISTORY OF HERMANUS TELEPHONES Hermanus came late to the telephone age. Invented in 1876 in the USA, 600 000 were operating in that country by 1900. However, it was only in 1919 that Hermanus received its first telephone. The instrument was in a public call box outside the (old) Post Office, near Niël du Toit’s shop in Main Road. There were call boxes in the lobbies of the hotels. Calls cost 3 pennies, a coin is known as a ‘tickey’ and the booths became known as ‘tickey boxes’. By 1923 the number of phones had grown slowly to 36, mostly hotels and shops. Every call had to be routed through a staffed switchboard, resulting in the famous phrase “Nommer, Asseblief, Number Please”, spoken as a single word. Service was limited to office hours only until the 1950s.’ when a night shift was opened. The best-known night shift operator was Piet (‘Matras”) van Zyl, who came to Hermanus in 1950 and held that post until 1977, when an automatic exchange was installed. His affectionate nickname from what his wife described as “his thick crop of curly hair”. The Great Depression and World War II delayed the construction of most new infrastructure, and it was only in 1948 that the Post Office moved to a new building, where it still is. The telephone exchange was moved to the same building. Soon after that, there were 700 phones in the town. The new exchange made it possible to put in new connections and 66 were installed in 1950. In January of that year Mr H Tommis, an estate agent, at last, had a phone. The Hermanus News printed a poem he wrote to celebrate the occasion: Hello, hello, hello, hello to all my friends, hello, This little happy word fills all one’s heart aglow! I’ve got my telephone today, I’m happy as can be, I’m like a little child, a child of 63… I’ll phone to General Hertzog, I’ll make rings around the moon This toy will all my life excite until the crack of doom. My uncle in Siam I’ll phone, my aunt in Timbuctoo My sister in Saskatchewan, my brother in the zoo…. Yes, I got my telephone today, I’m happy as a king, I pray the Lord takes everything but leave me ting-a-ling. And now, my friends, I’ll goodbye, just call and say ‘coo-ee’, Please give a ring at any time, the number’s 663. During February 1950 only 66 additional phones were connected. Today, Hermanus has twenty pages of landline numbers in the directory, plus tens of thousands of cell phones. As we approach 100 years of the telephone in our town (1919-2019), I doubt whether anyone will be as happy to have a telephone as Mr Tommis was when he received his back in 1950.