CITY OF LONDON

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 82, 3 October 1929, Page 28

CITY OF LONDON

50 YEARS OF TELEPHONES

Fifty years ago, in the month" of August, there were in London seven or eight rather bewildered but very proud men.. They were the first people to be connected with a telephone exchange, in the days when the telephone was a very new invention, states the "Daily Mail."

Tho exchange was at 36, Coleman street, E.C., the headquarters of the then newly formed Telephone Company, Ltd. (Bell's Patents), and it was London's first exchange. To-day London has no fewer than 642,400 telephones. _ The first telephone exchange 'was a' simple affair in a little bare room. But Liverpool had an exchange earlier in a barn-like building, in which sat the first "Hello" girl. By the end of the year two more exchanges had 'been opened in London, one at 101, Leadenhall street, and the other at 3, Palace Chambers, Westminster. Tho number of subscribers was 200. ■ ...

By April, 1880, whea the rival Edison Company was in the field with 170 subscribers, there were 400 subscribers and seven exchanges. Few people realise that Queen Victoria gave the telephone a good sendoff. In January, 1878, she summoned Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor, and he established communication between Osborne, Isle of Wight, Southampton, and London, and concerts were given. The Queen was presented with a special set of instruments.

In 1887 the United Telephone Company, with its six subsidiary companies, had 219 exchanges and 18,912 subscribers in various parts of England. Later the National Telephone Company gradually merged the smaller company with itself, ana in 1912 tho Post Office took over tho system. Now it is possible to sit at homo and communicate not only with tho United States, but with almost every country in Europe. The G.P.O. will arrange for a subscriber to .be called at any hour by thoir alarm service, and will take messages while a subscribor leaves his telephone unattended. Tests aro in progress at sea for telephoning from ships, and this month there was started a "personal trunk call" service, under which tho Post Ofiice will inform a subscribor when a person in any part of tho country is available for a: telephono conversation. This service is to bo oxtonded to tho Continent on Ist October.

England has now the third largest number of telephones with 1,759,686. The United States with 19,341,000, and Germany. with 2,950,430, aro tho leading countries.