Bell Company History

Although Bell had won the previous battle against Western Union, the battle of who provided better service was not over. In 1879, The Edison Telephone Company of London Ltd. was registered and began to work on Edison telephone patents. The first official exchange by The Edison Telephone Company of London Ltd. was opened on September 6, in London with 10 initial subscribers, but by February The Edison Telephone Company of London Ltd had had opened two other exchanges. The company now served a total of 172 subscribers. Edison managed great success due to their annual tariff. The company charged a total of £12 unlike Bell Company who charged an annual tariff of £20. Through much struggle of both companies to remain in the lead of each other, …show more content…
In 1881 The National Telephone company was made, and that same year it exploited the telephone market in Scotland, the Midlands and Ireland. The telephone grew to such a big extent that in July 13, 1882, grant licenses to operate telephones were beginning to be applied for. Another great contributor then came along to further improve the telephone. David Sinclair, Engineer of the National Telephone company patented the first automatic telephone switching device. What the device did, was to make it possible for users to automatically connect to any other individual who was in the system by means of an operator located in central exchange instead of the branch exchange which had to be done manually. A year after in 1884, Lars Magnus Ericsson of sweden made the first telephone handset, which combined the transmitter and receiver into one. In that same year the Postmaster-General withdrew the restrictions he had imposed for companies to obtain a license to work anywhere in the United Kingdom. After the decision of the Postmaster-General the public call office was born. Public call office were usually located in shops, railway stations, and other public