I still think the story of how and why the Strowger switch was invented is hilarious
-F
an undertaker was convinced that one of his competitors had some kind of conspiracy with the phone operators so that people trying to call him would be connected to his competitor instead (it's unclear whether this was actually the case), and his solution to the problem was to invent an automatic phone operator so that there wouldn't be anyone for his competitor to collude with
and this ended up revolutionizing the telephone network
-F
@Felthry TBF it wasn't the *most* paranoid idea-- specifically the competitor's wife was one of the operators, and he felt that she was sending calls for "the undertaker" to her husband instead of asking for clarification
