From telegraph to telephone at your home

The origins of the telephone and telephone network can of course be traced back to the telegraph. The first electrical telegraph lines began to be built in America and England in the 1830s, and their practical application was due to the spread of the telegraph, the invention of Samuel Morse in 1844. The telegraph triggered the development of communications, and as it sent messages over long distances using electrical signals and at an astonishing speed compared to earlier methods, it is not surprising that many became interested in converting the sound of speech into signals that could be sent over a network.

Alexander Graham Bell, who had patented his telephone set in 1876, is of course an obvious name to mention, but there were already major discoveries in the 1850s and 60s, such as the French telegraphist Charles Borseul, who worked on the telephone, or the German-born Philip Reis, who introduced his - not very practical - set in 1861. We should also mention Antonio Meucci, an Italian inventor living in America, whose work eventually inspired Bell's patent.

After 1876, the telephone took off from Boston and conquered the world - of course, this also required the resourcefulness and knowledge of people such as Tivadar Puskás and his idea for the telephone exchange built in 1877, or the fact that in 1888 Almon Strowger invented and built an automatic version of the exchange. But let's see how the history of telephoning in our country has evolved.

Networks in the sky, on ground

In 1879, Tivadar Puskás's brother, Ferenc, presented the technological achievement as a representative of the Edison company, and a year later he received permission to set up a telephone network in the country's major cities. On 1 May 1881, the telephone service began operating in the capital with a total of 50 stations. Shortly afterwards, the first three telephone exchanges were built in Budapest, and by 1888 the government had established an exclusive right to telecommunications, but the legislation facilitated rather than slowed the development and spread of the network. In 1890, the construction of an interconnecting long-distance also called interurban network began, and seven years later Budapest and Berlin were connected.

However, telephone subscriptions were very expensive, and at first they were typically used by ministries, banks and financial institutions, newspaper publishers and hotels. A decade and a half after its introduction, the service was connected to around 8,000 locations, but there were many complaints about incorrect connections, drop-outs and delays in hang-ups.

Slowly but surely, the number of telephone users and subscribers began to increase, as demonstrated by the fact that before 1901, the caller only had to tell the operator the name of the subscriber he wanted to reach, and then had to enter the caller's number to be identified. In the capital, the small telephone exchanges had been replaced by the large one on Nagymező Street by 1904, and the telephone cables that cluttered the streets and ran through the houses were hidden underground. By 1908, another Budapest exchange was needed, but it was not completed in Józsefváros until after the First World War.

As with all seemingly successful technological innovations, additional services were added to the telephone. One of these was the Telephone Newspaper service – called "Telefon Hirmondo" launched in 1893 by Tivadar Puskás, which provided subscribers with wall-mounted listening sets without a speaking part, the main part of the programme being news and stock market reports, and in the evenings concerts, operas and theatre performances. The Telephone Newspaper system was destroyed in the Second World War, although Budapest radio broadcast the same programme from the start of its operation in 1925.

A Telefonhírmondó az oktatás szolgálatában cikkivágat, Népszava, 1919. április 18. – Fővárosi Szabó Ervin Könyvtár, Budapest Gyűjtemény PDM

In 1914, 200 telephone exchanges connected 90,000 telephones, and smaller exchanges capable to automatic switching, but even so the service was less widespread among the population, the telephone was more of a work tool, and the speed of technical development in the years before the war had not reached the level of the western countries.

The Second World War left its mark on the telephone network, as it did on many other things, especially society as a whole, of course. By 1961, 671,000 subscribers had been acquired, but in the Kádár era the telephone was still a luxury item, the network had become obsolete in many places, it was possible to apply for a telephone connection, but typically long years passed under the promise of telephone access - even getting a car was easier. The speed of development of Hungary's telephone network was much more modest than in other socialist countries, and telecommunications were seen as an expense and a means of exercising power. The shortage of telephones lasted until the early 1990s, when the population had to make do mostly with public telephones.

Queuing in front of the booth

The first public telephone booth was put into operation on 13 December 1928 in front of Váci út 6, operated by the Hungarian Telephone Company (MaTaRt), the company of IBUSZ and the Hungarian Railway Traffic Ltd. By 1932, 600 booths were available to the people of Budapest, and by the Second World War the number had risen to nearly 2,000. In 1943, the call charge was raised from 20 to 30 penny, which meant that two different sized coins had to be inserted to use the phone, causing a series of breakdowns.

During the siege, almost all of the booths were destroyed, and their restoration began in the summer of 1946, when the yellow and green booths appeared on the streets, and, learning from the earlier coin size fiasco, a special coin was introduced for telephoning, designed by Sándor Farkas Boldogfai and in use until 1969 - although some sources say that there was a public telephone with a tantus in Gutenberg Square in the 8th district until later. The tantus was to be used like a coin, it was inserted into the telephone set, after dialling you had to wait, when the line was connected, the tantus fell off - hence our Hungarian expression "the tantus fell off".

Érem (tantusz) Thorma János Múzeum CC BY-NC-ND

Like the entire Hungarian telephone network, the network of public telephone boxes was managed by the Hungarian Post Office from March 1950. In 1960, a tender was launched for new booth designs, after which wall-mounted telephones appeared, protected by half-tops, and by the 1970s and 1980s more special versions were installed, so that by 1990 there were twenty different types of booths.

In addition to cash payments, a new payment option appeared in 1991, the chip phone card, which after a while became an indispensable everyday item and even developed a cult following, with many people collecting, exchanging and buying limited-edition cards with a more unique design.

The number and take-up of payphones peaked in 1999, but with the advent of mobile phones in the 1990s and their rapid spread, the fate of public telephones was sealed. Several ideas for new functions were floated, but these never progressed beyond the experimental stage, never became widespread, and experimental examples, such as Internet access points, were quickly dismantled. As street furniture, the booths became public libraries in some places, but most of them disappeared from the streets, as their maintenance was generating losses for the companies. In several countries, public payphones have been phased out altogether, but in this country there is legislation on where and how the operator must provide access to public telephones, so for a while longer they may be found in the busiest areas - but for how long?

KF

Translated by Gönczi László

Sources:

• Fónagy Zoltán: "A mondandókat hallani fogja" - A hírközlés 19. századi forradalma
• Telefon – Szellemi Tulajdon Nemzeti Hivatala
• Telefonia – A távközlés története – kikapcsolodas.t-com.hu, webarchív tartalom
• Frisnyák Zsuzsa: A telefon nélküli élet. Telefonhasználat a Kádár-korban
• Telefonérme, tantusz – MúzeumDigitár