45 YEARS AGO

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 47, 24 January 1938, Page 5

45 YEARS AGO

FIRST LONG-DISTANCE CALL. 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. It had been only 16 years earlier when 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 he hard to parallel in tho 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 excjinnge commenced to give service to 26 Aucklanl subscribers (there are 19,000 to-day) 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 car.”

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. 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 jn New Zealand, and in promoting a closer relationship, both commercially and socially, between the North and South Islands. How well that prophecy lias 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-fre-quency currents, in order to cope with the rapidly increasing volume of this business. THE “SHOUTING” DAYS.

Prior to 1926 it was only possible to telephone between the North and South islands by using telegraph circuits, which limited tlic opportunities to between midnight and 8 when telegraphing had ceased. High-fre-quency circuits, enabling one set of wires to be used simultaneously foe 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 provded by the introduction into tho Cook Strait telephone circuits of amplifiers, or repeaters. They were also used on the AueklandWeliington 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 Dolin'uiqirnqf 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 dato that New Zealand could equal the New York-Chicago commercial service by providing effective communication between the farthest ends of the country. Tre automatic telephone made its first appearance in commercial service in New Zealand in 1912, when 500 lines in Wellington, tho same number in Auckland, were equipped and operated in association with the manual switch-boards. THE RADIO TELEPHONE.

Another distinctive advance in New Zealand’s telephone development was 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 tho many services associated with telephone use, such as the “person-to-person call,” and the arrangement of appointments for conversation at a stated time. Public call offices arc numerous, hut this useful service could not have been effectively provided at the street corner unless New Zealand Post Office engineers had perfected a suitable type of prepayment instillment, which they improved in due course by introducing an attachment limiting the duration of the first call to three minutes, thus reducing inconvenience which had been caused to waiting customers through the long conversation of someone who had got ahead. Another distinctive point about telephones in New Zealand is that it is the only English-speaking country to provide penny-in-tlie-slot calls. The 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 able to provide a thousand-mile telephone conversation, has made some contributions of value to tlic worldwide telephone industry, and in its general development of the service it lias caught up, toll conversations of quite a thousand miles in the Dominion being now commonplace.