RINGING THE CHANGES

We didn't have a phone at home until the 1960s, and despite many journalistic hours spent using one - most often one of those clunky black monsters replete with A and B buttons and clickety-click dials - the system has never been part of my DNA. I found them useful rather than things of beauty. But some years ago I did come across a book (see below) published in 1980 to mark the first move of the phone industry into Norwich, and found it fascinating.
It was in August, 1880, that the United Telephone Company first sent their representatives to Norwich to test the potential appetite of the city's population, their interest having been wetted by a lecture about telephones and a public demonstration by a certain Professor Barrett, held in 1877 at the Victoria Hall. Then, they tried to communicate with Cromer, but it evidently snowed that day, lines were brought down, and the demonstration largely failed. The audience was hooked, though.
Earlier pre-phone communications networks used in the county included a shutter system (1806-1814) which, it was claimed, enabled a message to be sent from the Admiralty in London to the Port Admiral in Great Yarmouth in 17 minutes. This involved 17 shutter way stations (including  East Harling, Wreningham, Thorpe and Strumpshaw) and three men at each station.
Then in 1851 the first reliable submarine telegraph cable was laid between Dover and Calais, heralding the arrival of the telegraph system. Norfolk and Suffolk were busy places in this respect, and the book lists, among others, the following cable routes: Weybourne to Emden and Heligoland; Lowestoft to Nordeney and Borkum; Benacre to Zandvoort; Mundesley to Nordeney; and Bacton to Borkum and Zandvoort. These undersea cable connections seem to have been made between the years 1853 and 1913.
The first telephone exchange (again, the United Telephone Company) in Norwich opened in Exchange Street in March, 1883. Weekday hours of operation were 8.30am to 6pm, and two people took turns to work a switchboard with 32 subscribers. On one occasion the exchange was kept open late for a chess match! This apparently took place in June, 1884, between contestants at Pine Banks Tower, Thorpe (Norwich) and the old city Literary Institute, and the operator was ordered to monitor the line constantly to make sure everything was working.
A first list of subscribers on the Norwich Exchange is also a fascinating read. The numbers ran from 1 to 33, with No.18 vacant. The Eastern Daily Press had two numbers, 6 and 7 - the second being the print works - as did Fletcher the printer, the M&GN railway, Jarrolds, Jewsons and Pickfords. The single numbers included Barclay's Bank, Bullards brewery, Carrow Works, Boulton & Paul, Clabburn the solicitors, Thorpe and Victoria railway stations, Hellesdon asylum, the police station, and Bagshaw the game dealer.
By 1891 it was apparent that the Exchange Street premises were too small, and the service moved into the Haymarket above the Great Eastern railway parcel offices. By the time it opened in 1894 it also had a trunk line to Yarmouth, which had 23 customers, and Lowestoft, with 26. 
During the Second World War the network suffered badly from damage to phone lines and exchanges by drifting barrage balloons which had broken free from their moorings. So much damage, in fact, that in 1940 the balloons caused more damage than enemy action.
(The First 100 Years of Telephones, Viewed from Norwich, by Eric G Clayton, British Telecom/Post Office centenary celebration, published 1980).