TELEPHONE’S HISTORY

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 November 1936, Page 2

TELEPHONE’S HISTORY

DEVELOPMENT IN ENGLAND. This is the year of the diamond jubilee of the invention of the telephone, says a writer in the “Manchesterh Guardian.” The story properly begins on March 10, 1876, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, when Professor Alexander Graham Bell made his voice travel over a wire from one room to another. Even this was not the first instance in which sound was conveyed along telephonic lines. The first electrical appliance to which the name “telephone” was given was invented by a German, Philipp Reis, in 1861. This, however, was intended only for the transmission of musical sounds, although it appears that on occasions it was successful in transmitting spoken words, but in an accidental way, the principals involved not being clearly known. These principles were first explained in 1876 by Professor Bell; and as he produced the first practical instrument he is generally credited with the invention of the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell was born ia Edinburgh in 1847, and died' in 1922. He was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh and London, and went to Canada for health reasons' in 1870. Two years later in the United States, at Boston, he started a school for training teachers of the deaf, and the next year he became professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. He experimented in both telegraphy and telephony, and on June 2, 1875, succeeded in transmitting by wire the sound of a twanging clockspring. The following year he exhibited his invention, the telephone, at the Philadelphia Exhibition. It is right to say that other experimenters were working along similar lines at the same time as Bell, and that his claim to the invention of the telephone (described in his application for a patent as “improvement in telegraphy”) was only upheld after prolonged litigation.

THE FIRST EXCHANGES. The first telephone exchange was established in Boston, United States, in May, 1877, but it was not until the invention of the microphone, or transmitter, by Edison had greatly extended the 'practical usefulness of the telephone that exchanges were established in this country. The first exchange in this country was opened in London in 1879. It was a small, select undertaking, consisting of a few private wires to a few far-sighted subscribers, and it appears that there was only one operator, a boy. It was closely followed by exchanges at Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Halifax, Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Bristol.

The exchange at Manchester has been claimed to be the first, public exchange in operation in Great Britain. The telephone was introduced to Manchester by the late Mr Charles Moseley, of the firm of David Moseley and Sons, Ltd., indiarubber manufacturers. In 1877 he founded, in conjunction wih Mr W. F. Bottomley. a business for the provision of private-wire telephone services. In 1879—the year in which the Lancashire Telephone Exchange Co., Ltd., opened an exchange at 38 Faulkner Street, with an office at the Royal Exchange—a. granular carbon transmitter, the invention of Dr. Alexander Marr, who joined the Moseley firm as head of the construction department, was patented, and the firm prepared to open an exchange at New Brown Street in 1881.

Before this, in 1880, the PostmasterGeneral claimed control over the provision of telephone services and issued licenses for them, and during the Winter of that year opera music was sent by telephone from the Manchester theatres, a most interesting foreshadowing, within its narrow limits, of the wireless relay of forty-five years later. About this time the Edison Company advertised a demonstration in Manchester; laJQer they opened an exchange at No. 8, Commercial Buildings, 15 Cross Street. Eventually both the Moseley Company and the Edison Company were taken over by the Lancashire and Cheshire Telephone Company, and in 1888 what was then the finest switchboard in the kingdom was opened at the Royal Exchange, Manchester. It had an ultimate capacity for 4200 lines, and was equipped initially for 1600. The year 1889 saw the amalgamation of the three chief telephone companies in this country, the United Kingdom, Lancashire and Cheshire, and National Telephone companies, the last-mentioned giving its name to the combine. Telephone charges were so high, however, that, following a public meeting to discu,ss “co-opera-tive telephony,” it was decided to form the Mutual Telephone Company, which came into being in 1890 and opened its first exchange on February 28, 1891. This concern changed hands several times before being finally bought by the National Telephone Company. The transfer of the telephone system to Government administration as a branch of the Post Office took place in 1912. At first telephone working was entirely dependent on local batteries at the subscribers’ premises, but about 1898 a great development took place with the introduction of the centralbattery system, which, in its most complete form, dispenses with the local batteries, all the current necessary being supplied- through the line from the exchange. Upon this system modern automatic telephony has been based.

AUTOMATIC WORKING. In 1912 the British Post Office opened its first automatic exchange, at Epsom, with about 400 lines. This was followed by other exchanges selected as suitable for a comprehensive series of experiments; but the World' War interefered with the programme, and it was not until after the war that the transfer to automatic working made substantial progress. Between 1919 and 1924 only ten new automatic exchanges were brought into service in the United Kingdom,' while in 1931 alone over 400 were nro-i yided. In the previous year the number of exchange lines connected with manual exchanges reached a maximum of 950,000, and the number connected with automatic exchanges was 245,000. Since that date the development of automatic telephony has been faster even than the rapid growth in the number of subscribers. At the present date 942,000 lines are served by manual exchanges and over 681,000 lines are served by automatic exchanges. By the end of 1936 75 per

cent, of the telephones in Manchester and the neighbouring towns will be automatic. The policy of the Post Office is to convert existing local manual exchanges to automatic working, and an average of 200 transfers has been made each year during the past five years. At this rate all exchanges in Great Britain will be working automatically in less than twenty years’ time. The conversion to automatic working has not caused any reduction in the number of operators employed. All short and long-distance trunk calls must necessarily be handled manually, and almost triple use is now made of the telephone compared with just after the war; a little over 750,000,000 calls were effected in 1919, compared with approximately 2,000,000,000 during last year. The first telephone directory in London was issued by the Telephone Company, Ltd., in April, 1888. It was a booklet of just over thirty-live octavo pages, containing only 446 entries. The Bank of England was not included in it, no Government department, and not even Scotland Yard'. There was but one “Brown” and no “Jones.’’ The present London directory contains half a million names and fills two volumes of over 2300 pages. It is as good a measure as any to show the growth of the telephone during sixty years.