45 YEARS AGO

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22308, 24 January 1938, Page 13

45 YEARS AGO

FIRST LONG-DISTANCE CALL DISTINCTIVE DATES IN TELEPHONE HISTORY It was only 45 years ago when the first long-distance telephone conversation took place. Alexander Graham Bell inaugurating a service of 1000 miles from New York to Chicago. Only 16 years earlier Bell had spoken the first sentence for transmission by wire. Although the beginnings of the telephone are comparatively recent, the rapidity of its development into a medium of world-wide communication would be hard to parallel in the history of any other invention. In New Zealand the telephone has made extraordinary strides in the 55 years since the first exchange was opened with 27 subscribers in Christchurch. A few days later, an exchange commenced to give service to 26 Auckland subscribers —there are 19,000 today—and a little later Dunedin commenced telephone business with 56 subscribers. When Bell was able to make the first important long-distance conversation, New Zealand had 22 telephone exchanges with 2829 subscribers, using equipment which would seem clumsy to modern subscribers with their handset telephones. The receiver of those days was fitted with headgear, carrying dual ear-pieces, and as these were cumbersome, the New Zealand Post and Telegraph engineers evolved an improvement by producing an article which, to quote an old account, "consisted of only one little ebonite frame about the size of a watch, to be held to the ear." Long-distance telephoning made its first definite advance in New Zealand when a four-core telephone cable was laid across Cook Strait in March, 1926. i The route was from Seddon, in Marlborough, to Lyall Bay, Wellington, and it was officially suggested at the time that it was destined to become an important factor in fostering the development of long-distance telephony in New Zealand, and in promoting a closer relationship, both commercially and socially, between the North Island and the South Island. How well that prophecy has come true is evidenced by the growth of cross-Strait telephoning to a total of 290,000 conversations in a year, and the introduction of the most modern of submarine cables, the coaxial, utilising high-frequency currents, in order to cope with the rapidlv increasing volume of this business. The "Shouting" Days Before 1926 it was only possible to telephone between the North Island and South Island by using telegraph

circuits, which limited the opportunities to between midnight and 8 a.m when telegraphing had ceased. Highfrequency circuits, enabling one set of wires to be used simultaneously for more than one purpose, had not then come into general use, and the amplifier was also yet to come, so that it was a difficult business to obtain clear reception, and these were the "shouting" days of the long-distance telephone. Easy speech and clear reception came, however, in 1926, when the greatest aid to long-distance communication was provided by the introduction into the Cook Strait telephone circuits of amplifiers, or repeaters. They were also used on the AucklandWellington circuits, with a great improvement in efficiency. Christchurch was soon able to enjoy telephone communication with Auckland, an impressive extension of the range of the toll lines compared with the first toll line which had been operated between * Dunedin and Invercargill in 1905, over a distance of 139 miles. In 1929 the introduction into the Dominion of carrier current telephony gave the next great impetus to the service, for it brought into greater use. simultaneously with their normal operation for telegraphy, the telegraph lines of the country. It was about that date that New Zealand could equal the New York-Chicago commercial service by providing effective communication between the farthest ends of the country. The Automatic Telephone The automatic telephone made its first appearance in commercial service in New Zealand in 1912, when 500 lines in Wellington, and the same number in Auckland, were equipped and operated in association with the manual switch-boards. Another distinctive advance in New Zealand's telephone development wes the linking up, through radio telephony, with the telephone systems of Australia and the United Kingdom and several Continental countries. This took place in 1930. New Zealand stands high in the list of countries having the greatest telephone density in relation to population, and this has undoubtedly been promoted by the many services associated with telephone use, such as the "person-to-person call." Another distinctive point about telephones in New Zealand is that it is the only English-speaking country to provide penny-in-the-slot calls. Thp minimum charge in Australia and Great Britain is 2d; in Canada and the United States it is 2Jd; and in South Africa 3d. New Zealand, though it was well behind the United States in being ab : e to provide a thousand-mile telephone conversation, has made some contributions of value to the world-wide telephone industry.