50 YEARS OF TELEPHONES.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 312, 31 October 1929, Page 3

50 YEARS OF TELEPHONES.

■ LONDON’S FIRST EXCHANGE. Fifty years ago there were in London seven or eight rather bewildered but very proud men. They were .he first people to be connected with a telephone exchange, in the days when the telephone was a very new invention. The 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 “ hullo ” 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, The number of subscribers was 200. By April, 1880, when 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, and in 1912 the Post Office took over the system. Now it is possible to sit at home and communicate not only with the United States, but with almost every country in Europe. The General Post Office will arrange for a subscriber to be called at any hour by Its alarm service, and will take messages while a subscriber leaves his telephone unattended. Tests are in progress at pea for telephoning from ships, and this month there was started a “ personal trunk call ’’ service, under which the Post Office will inform a subscriber when a person in any part of the country is available for a telephone conversation. This service is to be extended to the Continent at once.