The headline: "A telephonic marvel," March 1, 1879, Deseret News
A marvel indeed! L.E. Holden, "the well-known mining magnate of the city," was communicating - by telephone - from his downtown office with A.M. Munser, who sat in Holden's "elegant residence six blocks away on South Temple Street."The two conversed, the newspaper assured its readers, as distinctly as if they were in the same room.
Munser, who had been instrumental in bringing telegraph service to Utah, was now into a new technology - the telephone.
On this March day, the Deseret News reported, the ticking of a watch was as loud as the ticking of a clock, and the rumbling of wagons on Main Street was clearly discernible in the background, even to folks standing as far as 12 feet from the instrument. It was the first public demonstration in Salt Lake City of this newfangled invention that was taking the country by storm.
At an average cost of $3 per month, the system proposed for Salt Lake City would put subscribers "in instantaneous communication with each other," advertising promised. Potential users were assured that a simple device would protect them against eaves-droppers.
Holden lent his name to the promotion effort in a Deseret News testimonial that said his family had found the telephone wires between his office and home to be "a very great convenience. . . . An extension of telephonic facilities by the establishment of a District Telephone system, as in many eastern cities, where they are appreciated, would be an excellent method of instantaneous communication between houses and citizens having business and social interests in different parts of the city, and that, too, at a nominal cost per month."
Salt Lake City's system, as it turned out, lagged behind the one established in Ogden in 1879. The first line in the Weber County city connected George A. Lowe's store to his warehouse.
But, the Ogden Junction reported, it was only a matter of time until everyone in Ogden would be communicating by phone. "The idea is to run wires from one business house to another and from one residence to another, that telephone communication may be a settled fact in every household," the newspaper said.
Householders were assured that they soon would have connections to their butchers, bankers and grocers so they could "give orders from their firesides and have them executed and never move outside their residences."
The first Ogden directory, published Oct. 23, 1880, named 56 subscribers. Sarah Martin (later Mrs. Smith) was the city's first full-time operator, starting her duties on May 1, 1883. Her brother, Thomas, became the nighttime operator.
Less than three months after Ogden initiated its service, Salt Laker J.J. Dickey obtained a license, but it was canceled before he got a system under way, and he became part of another group that succeeded in going on line in April 1881. The central office was at 100 South and Main Street, but in 1895, the company moved to a three-story building on State Street, its home for many years.
The first wires were strung from housetops, and Miss Mary Ferguson became the friendly voice that answered when subscribers summoned the operator.
As quickly as service was extended to their neighborhoods, people ordered their Blake receivers, which were mounted on walnut panels with a battery box at the bottom. On Jan. 1, 1882, there were 25 subscribers and six employees. By 1890, the numbers had grown to 506 and 13 respectively, and in 1911, 13,048 Salt Lakers were enjoying telephone service.
Salt Lake City's wide streets, the pride of the city's designers, were a problem when the age of electricity arrived. It was necessary to run poles down the center of the streets and to "stack" the various lines for electric power, telephone, telegraph and trolley cars.
At considerable risk to linemen, the telephone folks agreed to be near the top. But, according to an account in "A Centennial History of Utah," published in 1949, linemen all over America declared Salt Lake's lines, strung on 60-foot Idaho cedar poles, "the most beautiful in existence."
In 1877, Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone that was coming into such popular use, had envisioned a time "perhaps in the next century" when the "tiniest, farthest hamlet will be woven into the wire fabric."
His estimates of long-distance communication were right on. But a long-distance call in the early days could be an adventure. Each of the parties had to be at the central office of his service area. Often, a messenger from the company had a long horse ride out into the country to summon the person for whom the call was intended. Meanwhile, the person who placed the call had to wait in the office at his end until his party was rounded up - a process that often took hours and possibly days. Such a call was, in fact, a momentous occasion and not for frivolous messages.
The first interstate call in the West linked parties in Ogden and Evanston, Wyo., who carried on "an animated conversation" that could be heard at each point "with great distinctness." It was the first long-distance call west of the Alleghany Mountains, the Utah history proclaimed.
Just as Utah was the "crossroads" for the connecting of rail lines, transcontinental telephone lines also met in the Beehive State.
In the "most famous epoch of all in long-distance communication in the United States," the last pole was set July 28, 1914, on the Utah/Nevada line near Wendover, bridging the thousands of miles between New York and San Francisco.
Linemen George R. Needy, Elmer Dodd and Arthur Fender shinnied up the pole to make the splice connecting telephones ocean-to-ocean. Excited telephone officials on both coasts initiated the line the following day.
Stringing the line across Utah had been no easy feat. In the Park City area, workmen contended with the worst winter in recent history, with snow up to 12 feet deep. At the other extreme, temperatures on the Salt Flats sometimes topped out at 130 degrees, forcing linemen to rest during the day and do their work at night.
Among those who celebrated the ties that bound the country from Atlantic to Pacific were telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson.
Soon after the transcontinental lines were in place, Bell, who was in New York, called Watson in San Francisco.
"Come here, I want you," said Bell, repeating the famous first words he had used in the March 7, 1876, conversation that opened the telephone era.
Watson's response: "Mr. Bell, I can't. I'm too far away."
It was the last conversation between the two who had pioneered one of the leading technologies of the modern age, according to the history book.