The History of the Telephone in the United Kingdom

Abstract

THE reprint of this history is the same as the first edition of 1925, but it may usefully be recalled that the author brings together representative material relevant to the development of the telephone service in Great Britain from the invention of the telephone more than sixty years ago until 1912, when the main body of the telephone system was brought under the unified control of the State, with details of machine-switching and long-distance telephony up to 1922, which preceded the inauguration of unified control of international telephony by a consultative committee. The author, sponsored by Mr. Frank Gill, chief engineer of the National Telephone Company between 1902 and 1913, modestly claims that he has prevented historical material from straying, but he has certainly anticipated what he expects a later writer to do, critically to describe the problems of exploitation of an invention in many respects still similar in essentials to its original form, and draw lessons from a balanced view of the past.

The History of the Telephone in the United Kingdom

By F. G. C. Baldwin. Cheaper edition. Pp. xxvi + 728 + 75 plates. (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1938). 15s. net.