In the field of inventions and patents there have always been disputes over the paternity of certain inventions. We have already seen that if Antonio Meucci had 10 dollars, the iPhone would be a telephone . For what there is no dispute is the paternity of the automatic telephone switchboard... the American Almon Brown Strowger in 1889 .
Strowger
The telephone quickly spread throughout the country and in just one year it crossed the pond to reach Europe. In 1878 Bell opened the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut (USA) with 21 subscribers, including the novelist Mark Twain. The wiring of the subscribers reached these switchboards and the switchboard operators -because they were normally women- were in charge of manually connecting the pins of the panel and thus connecting the caller's telephone with the requested number.
Almon Strowger he was a businessman who owned a funeral home in Kansas City. His life went on normally until, without knowing how or why, his business began to lose customers. He began to investigate to see what had changed in the business; the only change was that a few months ago a telephone line had been contracted that, in theory, should have served to increase customers and not worsen business as it was happening. That didn't add up, until the cake was blown… one of the local switchboard operators was the wife of a competing owner and all calls requesting funeral home services went to her competitor. Strowger brought it to the attention of the operator's superiors but they did nothing. So, he decided to fix it himself.
His idea was automatic switchboards to avoid the interested diversion of calls and the gossipy operators who liked to listen to conversations. He made a model of his invention and, thanks to his nephew William's knowledge of electricity, they made it work. In 1889, they applied for a patent for the Automatic Telephone Switching System (Automatic Telephone Switching System) and it was granted to them with the number US447918 in 1891. Already with the patent, they looked for a capitalist partner that could finance the manufacture and commercialization of his invention. After some other fiasco, the salesman Joseph Harris accepted the proposal but as long as a company was formed... that's how Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange was born. . On November 3, 1892, the first automatic telephone exchange with capacity for 99 subscribers was installed in La Porte (Indiana). The presentation was a complete success and some baptized it as…
The first telephone exchange without a single petticoat.
Not everyone was happy with the new switchboards; operators would be out of a job. Strowger remembered them in the presentation speech…
They tell me that the operators are angry with me for putting them out of work but they are the adjustments of evolution […] The telephone replaced the messengers and this machine replaces the girls. […] The improvements will continue until the end of time…
Logically, improvements were made and the capacity of the centralists increased, arriving in Europe in 1898. That same year, Strowger decided to step aside and leave the business:he sold the patent for $1,800 and his share in the company for $10,000. . Eighteen years later, in 1916, Bell's company bought Strowger's invention for $2.5 million. Strowger retired to Florida where the climate was more benign for his ailments and, again, he returned to setting up a funeral home. He died on May 26, 1902, aged 62, and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery the following day. In 1949 a commemorative plaque was placed…
Here rests the remains of Almon Strowger, 1839-1902, inventor and pioneer, whose dream of better telephone service inspired him to invent the first automatic telephone system in 1889. This plaque is placed in his honor on the 110th anniversary of his birth by the grateful members of the telephone industry on October 19, 1949.