Telephone in Various Countries

TELEPHONE IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES The introduction of the telephone and the development of the business in countries other than the United States will be briefly outlined in the following paragraphs. The post-war expansion of international telephone communications in Europe, the recent development of long distance telephone cable facilities in the various European countries, and statistics reflecting the present status of telephone development throughout the world will be presented in the remaining sections of this article.

Great Britain.

Earnest efforts were made by the early backers of the telephone in America to introduce it to use in Europe. Prof. Bell himself visited England and Scotland on his wedding trip in 1878 in the hope of developing a demand for the telephone in his native country. Queen Victoria congratulated Bell upon the success of his invention and offered to purchase a pair of telephones, but the inventor made her a present of two instruments especially done in ivory. This assisted in bringing the telephone to public attention and in 1879 the first telephone exchange was opened in London with seven or eight subscribers. Several companies were established for the purpose of introduc ing the telephone in various parts of the United Kingdom, but in 1880 the British courts held that the telephone system was legally a telegraph system within the meaning of the Acts of Parliament making the telegraph a monopoly of the Postmaster General. The British Post Office thereafter issued licenses on a royalty basis to several private companies, which were ultimately consolidated into a single large company. Licenses for the estab lishment of municipal telephone systems were also issued to a number of cities and several such systems were established.

In 1896 the Post Office bought the long distance lines through out the United Kingdom and after that the privately owned telephone company confined its activities to the operation of local exchanges. The Post Office, however, began establishing its own local telephone exchanges in London in 1902 and these were con nected with the company's system. Upon the expiration of the company's license on December 31, 1911 the Post Office acquired its entire telephone properties by purchase and now operates all telephones in Great Britain, with the exception of the municipal systems at Hull, and the Channel islands of Guernsey and Jersey. Upon the establishment of the Irish Free State the British Post Office transferred to the Free State Government its telephone system in Southern Ireland. In most of the continental countries,

as well as in Great Britain, the telegraph system was already a government monopoly when the telephone was introduced. The government telegraph officials in Continental countries, apparently regarding Bell's invention as a possible competitor of the tele graphs, were therefore reluctant to encourage it. In most cases, moreover, the government officials did not feel justified in under taking the risks of attempting to develop this new means of communication. The usual procedure, therefore, was to allow the private companies to do the pioneer work of bringing the telephone into use under licenses imposing more or less restrictive conditions. However, as the potential factors of telephone com munication gradually were appreciated, most of the governments on the Continent took over the company-operated systems and the telephone service was thereafter administered along with the postal and telegraph system. Of later years a tendency to turn again to private enterprise for the provision of more adequate telephone facilities has been manifest in Italy, Spain and else where. Motives of military preparedness unquestionably actuated government officials in taking steps in the early days of the tele phone to secure full control of all means of communication. Experience with the telephone in the World War practically revolutionized military practice in the maintenance of communi cations. The Signal Corps of the United States Army, for example, constructed during the war 1,990 miles of permanent pole line with 28,00o miles of wire, put up 3,230 miles of wire on French poles and installed approximately 40,00o miles of combat lines. American military telephone exchanges on permanent lines in France numbered and those in the advance section numbered 123, besides small temporary field installations. About 1,600,00o long distance telephone calls were handled by the Signal Corps, in addition to local telephone calls estimated at 47,000,000. Other belligerent countries as well drew heavily upon the equipment and personnel of their home telephone organizations to meet the greatly expanded requirements of their military communication systems during the war. For example, about 13,000 out of the 20,000 men in the engineering department of the British Post Office joined the colours.