A party line (multiparty line, shared service line, party wire) is a local loop telephone circuit that is shared by multiple telephone service subscribers. Party line systems were widely used to provide telephone service, starting with the first commercial switchboards in 1878.
Party lines provided no privacy in communication. They were frequently used as a source of entertainment and gossip, as well as a means of quickly alerting entire neighborhoods of emergencies such as fires, becoming a cultural fixture of rural areas for many decades. Objections about one party monopolizing a multi-party line were a staple of complaints to telephone companies and letters to advice columnists for years and eavesdropping on calls remained an ongoing concern.
A majority of Bell System subscribers in the mid-20th century in the United States and Canada were served by party lines, which had a discount over individual service. During wartime shortages, these were often the only available lines. British users similarly benefited from the party line discount. Farmers in rural Australia and South Africa used party lines, where a single line spanned miles from the nearest town to one property and on to the next.
Telephone companies offered party lines beginning in the late 1800s, although subscribers in all but the most rural areas may have had the option to upgrade to individual line service at an additional monthly charge. The service was common in sparsely populated areas where subscribers were spread across large distances. An example is Australia where these were operated by the Government Postmaster General’s Department. In rural areas in the early 20th century, additional subscribers and telephones, often numbering several dozen, were frequently connected to the single loop available.
The rapid growth of telephone service demand, especially after WWII, resulted in many party line installations in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. This often led to traffic congestion in the telephone network, as the line to a destination telephone was often busy. Nearly three-quarters of Pennsylvania residential service in 1943 was party line, with users encouraged to limit calls to five minutes. Shortages persisted for years after each war; individual lines in Montreal remained in short supply at the end of 1919 and similar shortages were reported by telephone companies in Florida as late as 1948. Some rural users had to run their own wires to reach the utility’s lines.
In December 1942, University of Tennessee’s strategy in an American football game versus University of Mississippi was revealed to the opposing coach, when a telephone on the Ole Miss team’s bench had been inadvertently wired to the same party line. In May 1952, an alleged bookmaking operation in St. Petersburg, Florida was shut down after one month of operation in a rented storefront using a party-line telephone. In June 1968, the conviction of three Winter Park, Florida men on bookmaking charges was overturned as police had used a party-line telephone in a rented house on the same line as the suspects to unlawfully intercept their communications. In 1956, Southern Bell officials refused a request from a public utilities commissioner in Jackson, Mississippi to segregate party telephone lines on racial boundaries.
While primitive lockout devices to prevent two subscribers from picking up the same line at the same time were proposed relatively early, multiple simultaneous calls did not become viable until the initial tests of transistorised pair gain devices in 1955. Any handset off-hook therefore tied up the line for everyone. To signal specific subscribers on party lines selectively, telephone operating companies implemented various signaling systems. The earliest selective system was the code ringing system, in which each telephone subscriber was assigned a specific ringing cadence, (not to be confused with modern ring tones).
Many jurisdictions require a person engaged in a call on a party line to end the call immediately if another party needs the line for an emergency. Such laws also provide penalties for abuse by falsifying emergency situations. In May 1955, a Rhinebeck, New York woman was indicted by a grand jury after her refusal to relinquish a party line delayed a volunteer firefighter’s effort to report a grass fire. The fire destroyed a shed and a barn. She was given a suspended sentence. In June 1970, a sixteen-year-old girl and a woman were charged after refusing to relinquish a party line to allow a distress call as three boys drowned in a pond in Walsenburg, Colorado.
By the late 1980s, party lines were removed in most locales. They were not supported by new technologies and subscriber-owned equipment such as answering machines and computer modems. Meanwhile, the electro-mechanical switching equipment required for their operation was rapidly becoming obsolete, supplanted by electronic and digital switching equipment. The new telephone exchange equipment offered vertical service code calling features such as call forwarding and call waiting, but often was incompatible with multi-party lines. Party lines in the United States were ineligible for Universal Service Fund subsidies, leading telephone companies to convert them to individual lines to benefit from these subsidies. USA Today reported in 2000 that over 5,000 party lines still existed in the United States, but the majority of them were only connected to one telephone, and therefore appeared like individual telephone service at cheaper rates.
The Daily Omnivore 
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