LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - DECEMBER 03, 2023 by Lynne Belluscio I was working on updating an article that I wrote a few years ago about the first telephones in LeRoy. It was called the “Hello Girls” and included a photo of some women sitting at the switchboards in the Bell Telephone Company office in LeRoy. But as I was putting together the article, I really wanted to include a photo of an old wooden telephone. I thought I would have to use a photo off the internet. Well, as luck would have it, I was walking into the office of the Kelly Ford Company in Perry, and on the wall was a Strongberg Carlson crank wooden phone. I asked Marshal Kelly to tell me about the phone. He told me that his family had the first phone in the area and that the phone was in their house. It was the phone that all the neighbors used until they got phone service to their houses. That got me to thinking about the story I was writing about the phones in LeRoy. LeRoy got phone service in 1882. Alexander Graham Bell received the first patent for a telephone in 1876 and in 1877 the first phone line in the United States ran between Boston and Summerville, Massachusetts. Three years later there were 47,900 phone lines in the United States. By 1882, the telephone switchboard had been invented. So six years after the switchboard was invented and twelve years after Bell receives the patent, there was phone service in LeRoy. In Western New York, there were many independent phone companies that were all in competition with each other. Rochester Telephone was founded in 1899. Frontier, in Buffalo was founded in 1901. Although Bell Telephone first served the LeRoy community in 1901, Milton Wade of Franklinville also wanted to provide service to LeRoy. He offered a subscription that would cost 75 cents per household and $1 for each business. Wade provided services in Batavia, Lockport, Salamanca, Cuba, Akron, and Jamestown. He proposed that his company would erect poles in the back yards when possible. The Bell Company’s proposal was to use the existing poles and would go down East Main Street. The decision was up to the Village Board. Finally in October, the Board reviewed the options. They asked if the Gas and Electric poles could be used. Bell said that the poles were in no shape to be used. The Board didn’t want another set of poles to be erected just for phone service. The Board asked Bell Telephone to reset the poles on East Main Street or to use the lines of LeRoy Hydraulic Company. Bell said that wouldn’t work because the power lines were high tension wires, and it would interfere with the telephone system. (This was before the wires were wrapped.) Then a Board member asked Bell if it was willing to compensate with free telephones at the fire company rooms, one at the Water Commissioner’s office, and two at the pumping stations. The Board noted that Bell offered free phones in Batavia. There was more discussion. Trustee Heaman thought that Bell should pay $1 per pole annual rental. Not all the Trustees were in agreement with Bell’s proposal, and no decision was made at the end of the meeting. Apparently, a decision was made and Bell continued to serve LeRoy. It upgraded its service and made improvements, including the installation of a new switchboard. In the early years, the Bell office in LeRoy was under the direction of Ralph Baker. The rural phone lines in LeRoy extended east to Lime Rock and west to the Stone School in Stafford. Other lines went north to Stone Church and Bergen and south to Pavilion Center (and the Kelly home), Roanoke, Boston Corners, and Linwood. The Bell system in LeRoy was equipped with storage batteries and underground cable conduits on Main Street with a capacity of 800 lines which could directly connect to 22,000 exchanges throughout the country. It was noted that, “It gives the community the opportunity of conversing with practically any point in the United States.” The Gazette mentioned that whenever the silvery tinkle of a bell is heard in a majority of business houses and homes of LeRoy and vicinity, “It’s the ‘Bell.” In 1907, because of all the controversy and disagreements from town to town about telephone service, New York State established the New York State Public Service Commission. Eventually, telephone service became a federal issue and in 1934, Washington established t h e F e d e r a l Commu n i c a t i o n Commission. The telephone system was considered an issue of federal concern for national security and economic success. Wooden telephones were replaced by the “candlestick” telephone which had a mouthpiece and a handheld receiver. When automatic telephone exchanges were introduced, the base of the candlestick also featured a rotary Call Home
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTQ2MjM=