On This Day in Telephone History August 21ST 1879 Europe’s First Telephone Exchange, The Telephone Company Ltd, Opened in London. Located at 36 Coleman Street. The Telephone Company Ltd had a capacity for 150 lines and opened with about 8 subscribers.

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 2nd 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.  The annual tariff was £12 against £20 charged by the Bell Company.

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.

This year, Mr. William Preece (later Sir William Preece) of the Post Office Engineering staff, when asked whether the telephone would be an instrument of the future which would be largely taken up by the public, replied “I think not”. Questioned further he said “I fancy the descriptions we get of its use in America are a little exaggerated; but there are conditions in America which necessitate the use of instruments of this kind more than here. Here we have a superabundance of messengers, errand boys, and things of that kind.”