I'm at the library helping one of my kids with a paper and I want to cut and paste some info for home use. It's not very interesting. :)

http://www.telephonymuseum.com/telephone%20history.htm

An interesting turn of events happened in 1891. A Kansas City Undertaker by the name of Almon Strowger became tired of waiting for operators to answer the phone to make connections. So, he invented an "automatic" telephone that "dialed" a number with the push of buttons--early push button phones. He formed the Automatic Electric Company. This was a major development and it happened outside the Bell Companies.

With the Bell patents running out in 1893 and 1894, and the public tiring of Bell's monopolistic behavior, the era of "Independent Telephony" was born. Almost overnight, hundreds of smaller companies built phones and installed systems all over the country. And most all of those systems were in smaller towns and rural communities--areas in which the Bell company had no interest.

As the new century dawned, the Bell company had 800,000 phones in service compared to 600,000 in independent territories. The figures tell a story. With public distrust of the Bell company and the independents aggressively expanding--even into Bell operating territories, the Bell companies were starting to feel the heat. By 1903 and for a time, these independents had more subscribers than Bell.

http://www.geog.buffalo.edu/Geo666/flammger/tele2.html

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new?id=CasTele&tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&part=0

http://reviewscan.org/

quit abusing the boards!

BANNED!