BT Archives

Events in Telecommunications History

1879

The Telephone Company Ltd (Bell's Patents) opened Britain's first public telephone exchange at 36 Coleman Street, London, in August. It served eight subscribers with a two-panel 'Williams' switchboard. By the end of the year a further two exchanges had been opened at 101 Leadenhall Street, EC2 and 3 Palace Chambers, Westminster, the number of subscribers totalling 200.

Telephone exchanges were also opened by the company later in the year in Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Bristol.

Edison produced a telephone receiver known as the 'chalk receiver', 'motograph receiver' or 'electromotograph'.

The Edison Telephone Company of London Ltd was registered on 2 August with a capital of £200,000 to work the Edison telephone patents. The company's first exchange officially opened on 6 September at 11 Queen Victoria Street, London, with ten subscribers who used carbon transmitters and chalk receivers. By the end of the following February, when the company had another two exchanges in operation, it served 172 subscribers.

Daniel Connolly, T A Connolly and T J McTighe exhibited an eight-line automatic telephone exchange at the Paris Exhibition, although their system achieved little success.

Professor D E Hughes transmitted what he called 'aerial electric waves' from his rooms 500 yards down Great Portland Street, just behind what is now Broadcasting House. He was thus the first person to achieve radio communication. Later in the same year, Oliver Joseph Lodge (1851-1940), another Englishman, also transmitted wireless signals - this time a distance of 150 yards.

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