‘The telephone threatens the press, the pulpit and the stage alike with extinction,’ declared the Thames Star, in an extract from the Melbourne Leader in 1877. ‘This extraordinary instrument transmits the sounds of the human voice as quickly as they are spoken to a distance of twenty miles from the speaker; and there appears nothing to prevent it from sending them a thousand miles.’ The article went on to speculate that this fascinating new technology could someday connect businessmen or council members for meetings, allow sleepy parishioners to enjoy their Sunday church service without leaving home, or perhaps even remove the need for the Hansard at Parliament.
The Thames Star reported that twenty-five subscribers would need to sign on to make the Thames telephone exchange a reality. Twenty-seven people, mainly from local businesses, signed up within weeks, but this was still not quite enough to secure the new exchange – the Superintendant of the Post and Telegraph Department wrote back requesting ‘twenty five paying subscribers respectively sign an agreement to rent the telephone for three years,’ instead of the usual one year. It was feared that some of the subscribers were only signing on to make up the numbers, and they would abandon their telephone lines once the fad wore off.
By late in 1892, these early problems were resolved and the new telephone exchange opened in the Government Buildings on Queen Street. Subscriber numbers quickly increased to more than seventy-five, and the telephone exchange’s opening hours were increased to 8am-8pm daily. Early local phone users included Battson’s Plumbers (phone number: 3), R. and W. Twentyman Carpenters and Undertakers (phone number: 87), and Foy Bros. Studio (phone number: 66). Regular updates from the Post Office in the Thames Star updated the public on what hours the telephone exchange would be available each week.
Along with telephones came early telephone scams. The Thames Advertiser reported in 1883 on an ‘attempt to swindle by telephone’ in New York. Instead of swindling the unsuspecting stock brokers over the phone, however, the culprit asked to borrow their target’s phone for a personal phone call, leaving it engaged while an associate tried the cash a forged cheque supposedly written by the stock broker. The idea was that the bank teller would be unable to contact the stock broker’s office if they suspected the cheque was a fake, and might just agree to cash it to avoid an argument. Fortunately, the bank teller didn’t fall for this trick and the swindlers were arrested.
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