Another milestone in this history occurred in 1878, when Bell established the first public telephone connection and opened the first manually operated telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut (USA) with 21 subscribers. The subscribers' wiring reached these exchanges and the switchboard operators were responsible for manually connecting the pins on the panel and thus connecting the caller's telephone with the number requested. The interconnections were carried out by means of cables.
1889 - A funeral director and the automatic exchange
The operator-based call system had a problem: the operator herself.
Almon Strowger was a businessman who owned a funeral home in Kansas City. His life was going on as normal until, without knowing how or why, his business began to lose customers. He began to investigate to see what had changed in the business; the only change was that a few months ago a telephone line had been hired that, in theory, should have served to increase customers and not to worsen business as it was happening. That didn't add up, until it was discovered that one of the operators of the local telephone switchboard was the wife of a competitor's owner and all the calls requesting the services of a funeral home went to his competitor. Strowger brought this to the attention of the superiors of the operator but they did nothing. So, he decided to fix it himself.
His idea was to create automatic switchboards to avoid deliberate diversion of calls and to avoid operators who liked to listen to conversations. He made a model of his invention and, thanks to the electrical knowledge of his nephew William, they made it work. In 1889, they applied for a patent for the Automatic Telephone Switching System. They looked for a capitalist partner who could finance the manufacture and marketing of their invention, and thus the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange company was born. On November 3, 1892, the first automatic telephone exchange with a capacity for 99 subscribers was installed in La Porte (Indiana). The presentation was a great success.
First electromagnetic selector developed by Almon Brown Strowger, today in a German museum.
Not everyone was happy with the new switchboards; operators would be out of work. Strowger mentioned them in his presentation speech…
“I am told that the operators are angry with me for putting them out of work, but these are the adjustments that come with evolution […] The telephone replaced messengers and this machine replaces the girls. […] Improvements will continue until the end of time…”
Improvements were logically made and the capacity of the centralizers increased, reaching Europe in 1898. That same year, Strowger decided to step aside and leave the business: he sold the patent for 1,800 dollars and his share in the company for 10,000 dollars, retired to Florida where the climate was more benign for his ailments and, once again, opened a funeral home. He died on May 26, 1902, at the age of 62. Eighteen years after his retirement, in 1916, Bell's company bought Strowger's invention for 2.5 million dollars.
By: The team of SimpleTECH©
Sources:
https://myprofetecnologia.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/historia-y-evolucin-del-telfono/
http://www.almudenaseguros.es/blog/6-hitos-en-la-historia-del-telefono/
