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On 14 February 1876, Alexander Graham Bell filed, in
America, an application for a patent on a piece of equipment for
transmitting vocal sounds. "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you"
was what Bell said to his assistant on 10 March that same year as he
transmitted the first complete sentence over 100 feet of wire. |
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Bell's telephone - 1877
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In 1878, Bell demonstrated his apparatus - by then known
as a telephone - to Queen Victoria on 14 January at Osborne House on the
Isle of Wight. From there, calls were made to London, Cowes and Southampton
- the first long-distance telephone calls ever made in the UK.
The Telephone Company Ltd was formed to market Bell's invention in
Great Britain and their first Telephone Exchange was opened in London in
1879. It served eight subscribers. The first known Telephone Directory
was published in January 1880 listing 250 subscribers connected to 3
London Exchanges. |
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Osborne
House, Isle of Wight
The
family home of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert |
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Introducing a telephone system to London was fairly
straightforward compared with the creation of a nation-wide system
throughout the country. There were rival companies, each with their own
lines and operating systems to bring together and many technical
difficulties to overcome before the telephone reached the more remote
areas of Great Britain such as Devon and Cornwall.
In 1889, four companies united to form the National Telephone
Company which then went on to buy up all the smaller companies such as
The Western Counties and South Wales Company with its 4027 lines which
it purchased in 1892.
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Central
Telephone Exchange, London
Women
were employed because they could be paid far less than men |
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By the time of the 1901 Census, the National Telephone Company had
established itself in Exeter. We know this from the census return of
Douglas Stentiford, Jessie's youngest brother, who was born in Plymouth in 1874 and whose family we
first met in Issue 5. We find him living with his wife Adeline, their
baby daughter Matilda and his niece, Marian Leleux, at 37 Beaufort Road in
the St. Thomas area of Exeter. He is working for the
National Telephone Company as a foreman supervising installation of the lines in this
area. |
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Beaufort
Rd, St.
Thomas, Exeter
Douglas
and Adeline Stentiford lived at number 37
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