Shortly after the telephone was patented in the late 19th century, the early technology required every phone to have its own dedicated connection to the grid. In Sweden, Stockholm’s main telephone exchange – the Telefontornet, built in 1890, was a huge tower in the centre of the city with 5,000 individual lines radiating out across the rooftops.
The typically harsh Swedish winters caused havoc with the system, which was prone to fire and collapse under the weight of hanging ice, but the rapid advance of technology allowed the tower to be decommissioned in 1913. 40 years later, it caught fire and was demolished.
Hundreds more images at the Tekniska Museet (Museum of Technology) website.
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That’s how you imagine stuff works when you’re a kid.
This is an amazing post.
T’is no Five Lamps.
“Hello, 4?”
“Sorry, wrong number”.
Now all of it flat packed
The Men Behind the Wire.
Forgiven for thinking that the snow in Pic 7 were actually brides in various horizontal poses.
Ah yeah it’s a grand bit of Swedish technological history all right but you can’t bate the pot o’ coddle and oul’ mister Fortycoats, wha’?
more of this Broadsheet
+1 …i like me trivial history bits :)