Judge — April 26, 1913 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "His First Call" — Judge Magazine, April 26, 1913 This cartoon satirizes the new technology of the telephone through a gender-based joke. The illustration shows an elegantly dressed woman holding an early telephone receiver, gesturing expressively with her other hand as if speaking. The title "His First Call" suggests she's receiving a call from a man—likely a suitor. The satire plays on contemporary anxieties about modern courtship technology and gendered telephone etiquette. The woman's animated pose implies she's talking excessively or dramatically, a common comic stereotype of women on phones in the early 1900s. The joke likely mocks how the telephone was changing social interactions and dating rituals, with the new device potentially enabling more direct (and to contemporary eyes, inappropriately forward) communication between unmarried men and women.