July 13, 1960 (12 pages)

at Sm . ‘The advent . f iA wide Direct Distance DialES ing will mark the 66th year of phone exchange service, a milestone in the history of 3B local communications — a history closely woven into , the fabric of Grass Valley’s 4 and Nevada City’s colorful =~ t, A “ja . Pacific Telephone Manfi, ager George Hutchins has taken the occasion to look \ 2. “rq Grass Valley and Nevada City on December 1, 1894, just 18 years after Alexander Graham Bell’s ‘invention of the telephone, electric telephones were in service here as early as Janu© ary, 1878. According to Hutchins, the history of telephone communications in this area is unique in that its earliest phases reflect tremendous advancement in long distance transmission at a time when local telephoning was the country, and, for that in its infancy elsewhere in fact, in the world. Long Distance Each step in these early developments in long distance telephony reflects the ingenuity of the early gold miners and was largely the outgrowth of the technologoj ; j into local telephone archives a oP and reviews the progress of . ir w phone service here from the -¥ early days. 2. Although local exchange Ad = service was established in Ground was broken on March 5, 1959, k « for the new Grass Valley dial building at 315 ColfaxAve. Mayor Dick eather pet ; formed the honors with the spade while tbe complicated wiring job being done by other civic and business leaders looked on. Jnstaller Carl Smith in Nevada City's new Left to right: Clet Casterholt, Safeway dial building. Smith is tying customer manager and Vice-president of the Grass phone lines into the main distributing frame Valley Chamber of Commerce; George Wilfrom which wires fan out to various parts Printing son, Pacific: Telephone plant service of the dial switching equipment. For Every Purpose foreman; Tabe Bishop, County Super‘ e CIRCULARS visor; the Mayor, Kay Gallino,. Merchants e STATIONERY Association; George Hutchins, phone e MAIL PIECES manager and Jake Funk, contractor. e BILLS * e FORMS / wa PUBLISHING Grass Valley's first underground tele212 W. Main St. phone cable was laid in 1958. Big telephone construction rig is shown with linemen Joe Durkin (left) and Oden Fry. er Job: supervisor Herman Fravel, checks LL Grass Valley PHONE 273-4590 — = SS SS — — ———— bed — eee —— —— Smee — —— meee NEVADA CITY CAB CO. 114 S. Pine St. Nevada City * NEW PHONE 265-2221 panes 273-4679 IF NO ANSWER 273-2941 HARNEY PLUMBING CO. 75 S. Auburn, Grass Valley @ 273-2913 e@ceceeeesee EMERGENCY SERVICE eee 273-6483 MARV HADDY BAIL BONDS GRASS VALLEY TRANSFER Agents—Allied Van Lines World Wide Moving ” 265-2526 If No Answer Call 273—6973 ROTARY GAS & OIL CO Nevada City Highway 273-6498 ! pressure from the mountain heights to do the — 2 mes Sorat thie Mor Ban job involved inventiveness of the highest order. Anything was worth trying to these amateur engineers, and Bell’s new contraption gave promise of becoming as important a mining tool as the water conduit itself. Strangely enough, the first application of the new telephone to long distance service as well as the first use of telephones in the region were not for business’ use but purely for entertainment. On January 22, 1878, less than two years after Bell’s invention, a line was built by minérs six miles from Liberty Hill to Little York. Groups gathered on each end .and took turns singing, reciting and cracking jokes back and forth. Of course, only one person at a time could listen (the amplifying loudspeaker was still many years away) but it provided a lot of fun and amazement knowing that the sound was carrying all that way. The Liberty Hill-Little York line is shown by the Bell System’s latest historica] publication as the earliest known toll line in the world. As such, it came just three months after the world’s first two-way long distance conversation had been accomplished. On October 9, 1877, Bell and his righthand man, Thomas Watson, had conversed over a_ borrowed telegraph line between Cambridgeport and Boston, Mass. They reported very poor results. too. It is even more interesting to put the Liberty HillLittle York installation further into historical context by noting long distance line to be built as a commercial venture did not come until almost two years later—-in October, 1879. This was a 26-mile line between Boston and Lowell, Mass., built by the Pioneer Telephone Company. __._ Longest Line Not only does the Grass Valley-Nevada City region possess a genuine first in telephone history with its six-mile toll line, it also has a solid claim to what was probably the longest private company line of its time— the famous French Corral to French Lake installation. The line was constructed by a number of canal and water companies to meet the need for a communications system to control the flow of water from various reservoirs and storage lakes into the network of ditches which supplied the hydraulic mining companies and lumber mills in the area. The first leg of the line was completed in May, 1878, when the V-Flume Lumber Company ran a 13-mile .circuit from its office in Nevada City to its yard at Town Talk, then to its mill and on along the line of its flumes. Then the South Yuba Canal Company installed a line from its Nevada City office to Big Tunnel—-22 miles—and in July, 1878, hooked up with the that the first. V-Flume phone set-up. An extension by South Yuba Company of its. phone line to follow its wide-flung holdings, together with VFlume, added up to a whopping 184 miles. Later in the year, the Eureka, Bloomfield and Milton Water Cempanies joined, forces to build a phone line along San Juan Ridge through French Corral and other ditch camps of the firms. This line was 60 miles long and later became the Ridge Telephone Company. It -was then available to anyone wishing to pay for a call, The record shows no evidence that the two lines were ever connected, but does contain some detail on CRESSWELL’S.. 273-3495 Heavy and Light Towing Service 625 MILL ST. GRASS VALLEY Grass Valley Drug smmmmp 273-7218 124 S. Auburn St. Grass Valley ie Going over circuit layouts for Grass Valley's new phone building, are the two top men responsible for putting in the comples switching equipment: left, George Engelmann, overall project supervisor, and, right P.W. Ricker, supervisor. In background, running last-minute test on the myriad electronic test tubes, is E.B. McGill. They represent Western Electric Company, manufacturing and:installation arm of 273-7219 ‘ Twin Cities Ambulance Service All Personel State Licensed For Advanced First Aid PBEM 213-2323 * Se ES A ARR I YO Cer the Bell System. _ Its first offices were in the Express Office at French Juan, with E, Sunderland as secretary and manager, Edison telephone instruments wree used, rented from the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company of San Francisco for $20 a year apiece. ~The cost of the line, exelusive of poles, was $4,§23.26. The first year’s expenses_ were $2,993.09 and ‘total receipts Were $464.03. At first glance this «doesn’t look like a paying proposi-. tion, but the main value of the system was in the water control function it performed for the owning canal companies. Later history shows that these private phone lines were taken over when the Pacific Gas and Electric Company extended its holdings in the area and absorbed the various water companies. The ingenuity of the men who gave the Bret Harte country its early fame is reflected in some of the innovations developed to make the pioneer long distance lines work, When the number of telephones on the Ridge Company line was increased from 8'to 14, late in 1878, there was not enough power in the main office battery to transmit adequately. A Booster Some long-forgotten amateur scientist saw the need for a boosting device and then designed one. It was located part way up the line. at Malakauf Mine, and consisted’ of six four-quart jars filled with a solution of managanese. sal ammoniac, blue stone and zinc. Terminals of the telephone lead were passed through the solution, making this what was probably ‘the first telephone repeater station (as they are now called) ever built. Another problem arose, this one from the operation of a remote staticn at the ends of two different legs of the Ridge line. An operator had to be kept at the junction of these legs at English Mountain to answer calls and then switch them to the proper station. Jim Morris, Ridge’s wire chief and a famous mountain character, anticipated modern automatic _ telephone switching by devising a gadget which eliminated need for the operator. In July, 1879, he hooked up a clock device to the telephone line at English Mountain so that every half hour it would swing a switch in the opposite direction and connect one of the two remote stations. People on the main end of the line line would know the schedule and come on the lire when they wanted to talk to the remote station whose turn it was. Jim wound up and checked the time-switch on his weekly inspection trips. Local Service In the meantime. nothing much was being done about establishing local exchange telephone service in Grass Valley and Nevada City. Not until 1883 was any serious thought given the matter, and in this year the Sunset Telephone Company, 8 predecessor of Pacific Telephone, proposed to set up local service. Financial problems intervened, however, and it was not until December 1, 1894, that exchanges were inaugurated in the two communities. In Nevada City, the first’ telephone central office was located in Walter Vinton’s drug store on Broad Street The tiny, primitive ‘switchboard was manned by two of Vinton’s clerks: Joe O’Connell and Francis Conlon. As . Vinton time Pp board, L. Mo Steven: opposit hired, s ion wa erly a1 ley we 1900, v Muller ant dt years. In I took ¢ store a county Teleph¢ Stayed until . moved Mrs. was hi 1910 ar togethe as. Mi chief 0) Telepht Sunset. came m resigne: and M1 pointed ing unt There listed i (1895) These . Judi Natio Henr Daily Legg Unio) Geor, Hera) Mine Sheri Dr. C E, W Coun F. G. Ww. D Coun Dr. V Of th scribers appeare cery C ty office beok, ni Miner’s Scaddel Today a Ji-d: tional ] dry, an Gra: Hutel Valley disappo there is compan velopm phone e that W came n changes phone, phone Valley esfablis among ers as Telephc which t board vy Amor 128 .

at Sm . ‘The advent . f iA wide Direct Distance DialES ing will mark the 66th year of phone exchange service, a milestone in the history of 3B local communications — a history closely woven into , the fabric of Grass Valley’s 4 and Nevada City’s colorful =~ t, A “ja . Pacific Telephone Manfi, ager George Hutchins has taken the occasion to look \ 2. “rq Grass Valley and Nevada City on December 1, 1894, just 18 years after Alexander Graham Bell’s ‘invention of the telephone, electric telephones were in service here as early as Janu© ary, 1878. According to Hutchins, the history of telephone communications in this area is unique in that its earliest phases reflect tremendous advancement in long distance transmission at a time when local telephoning was the country, and, for that in its infancy elsewhere in fact, in the world. Long Distance Each step in these early developments in long distance telephony reflects the ingenuity of the early gold miners and was largely the outgrowth of the technologoj ; j into local telephone archives a oP and reviews the progress of . ir w phone service here from the -¥ early days. 2. Although local exchange Ad = service was established in Ground was broken on March 5, 1959, k « for the new Grass Valley dial building at 315 ColfaxAve. Mayor Dick eather pet ; formed the honors with the spade while tbe complicated wiring job being done by other civic and business leaders looked on. Jnstaller Carl Smith in Nevada City's new Left to right: Clet Casterholt, Safeway dial building. Smith is tying customer manager and Vice-president of the Grass phone lines into the main distributing frame Valley Chamber of Commerce; George Wilfrom which wires fan out to various parts Printing son, Pacific: Telephone plant service of the dial switching equipment. For Every Purpose foreman; Tabe Bishop, County Super‘ e CIRCULARS visor; the Mayor, Kay Gallino,. Merchants e STATIONERY Association; George Hutchins, phone e MAIL PIECES manager and Jake Funk, contractor. e BILLS * e FORMS / wa PUBLISHING Grass Valley's first underground tele212 W. Main St. phone cable was laid in 1958. Big telephone construction rig is shown with linemen Joe Durkin (left) and Oden Fry. er Job: supervisor Herman Fravel, checks LL Grass Valley PHONE 273-4590 — = SS SS — — ———— bed — eee —— —— Smee — —— meee NEVADA CITY CAB CO. 114 S. Pine St. Nevada City * NEW PHONE 265-2221 panes 273-4679 IF NO ANSWER 273-2941 HARNEY PLUMBING CO. 75 S. Auburn, Grass Valley @ 273-2913 e@ceceeeesee EMERGENCY SERVICE eee 273-6483 MARV HADDY BAIL BONDS GRASS VALLEY TRANSFER Agents—Allied Van Lines World Wide Moving ” 265-2526 If No Answer Call 273—6973 ROTARY GAS & OIL CO Nevada City Highway 273-6498 ! pressure from the mountain heights to do the — 2 mes Sorat thie Mor Ban job involved inventiveness of the highest order. Anything was worth trying to these amateur engineers, and Bell’s new contraption gave promise of becoming as important a mining tool as the water conduit itself. Strangely enough, the first application of the new telephone to long distance service as well as the first use of telephones in the region were not for business’ use but purely for entertainment. On January 22, 1878, less than two years after Bell’s invention, a line was built by minérs six miles from Liberty Hill to Little York. Groups gathered on each end .and took turns singing, reciting and cracking jokes back and forth. Of course, only one person at a time could listen (the amplifying loudspeaker was still many years away) but it provided a lot of fun and amazement knowing that the sound was carrying all that way. The Liberty Hill-Little York line is shown by the Bell System’s latest historica] publication as the earliest known toll line in the world. As such, it came just three months after the world’s first two-way long distance conversation had been accomplished. On October 9, 1877, Bell and his righthand man, Thomas Watson, had conversed over a_ borrowed telegraph line between Cambridgeport and Boston, Mass. They reported very poor results. too. It is even more interesting to put the Liberty HillLittle York installation further into historical context by noting long distance line to be built as a commercial venture did not come until almost two years later—-in October, 1879. This was a 26-mile line between Boston and Lowell, Mass., built by the Pioneer Telephone Company. __._ Longest Line Not only does the Grass Valley-Nevada City region possess a genuine first in telephone history with its six-mile toll line, it also has a solid claim to what was probably the longest private company line of its time— the famous French Corral to French Lake installation. The line was constructed by a number of canal and water companies to meet the need for a communications system to control the flow of water from various reservoirs and storage lakes into the network of ditches which supplied the hydraulic mining companies and lumber mills in the area. The first leg of the line was completed in May, 1878, when the V-Flume Lumber Company ran a 13-mile .circuit from its office in Nevada City to its yard at Town Talk, then to its mill and on along the line of its flumes. Then the South Yuba Canal Company installed a line from its Nevada City office to Big Tunnel—-22 miles—and in July, 1878, hooked up with the that the first. V-Flume phone set-up. An extension by South Yuba Company of its. phone line to follow its wide-flung holdings, together with VFlume, added up to a whopping 184 miles. Later in the year, the Eureka, Bloomfield and Milton Water Cempanies joined, forces to build a phone line along San Juan Ridge through French Corral and other ditch camps of the firms. This line was 60 miles long and later became the Ridge Telephone Company. It -was then available to anyone wishing to pay for a call, The record shows no evidence that the two lines were ever connected, but does contain some detail on CRESSWELL’S... 273-3495

Heavy and Light Towing Service 625 MILL ST. GRASS VALLEY Grass Valley Drug smmmmp 273-7218 124 S. Auburn St. Grass Valley ie Going over circuit layouts for Grass Valley's new phone building, are the two top men responsible for putting in the comples switching equipment: left, George Engelmann, overall project supervisor, and, right P.W. Ricker, supervisor. In background, running last-minute test on the myriad electronic test tubes, is E.B. McGill. They represent Western Electric Company, manufacturing and:installation arm of 273-7219 ‘ Twin Cities Ambulance Service All Personel State Licensed For Advanced First Aid PBEM 213-2323 * Se ES A ARR I YO Cer the Bell System. _ Its first offices were in the Express Office at French Juan, with E, Sunderland as secretary and manager, Edison telephone instruments wree used, rented from the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company of San Francisco for $20 a year apiece. ~The cost of the line, exelusive of poles, was $4,§23.26. The first year’s expenses_ were $2,993.09 and ‘total receipts Were $464.03. At first glance this «doesn’t look like a paying proposi-. tion, but the main value of the system was in the water control function it performed for the owning canal companies. Later history shows that these private phone lines were taken over when the Pacific Gas and Electric Company extended its holdings in the area and absorbed the various water companies. The ingenuity of the men who gave the Bret Harte country its early fame is reflected in some of the innovations developed to make the pioneer long distance lines work, When the number of telephones on the Ridge Company line was increased from 8'to 14, late in 1878, there was not enough power in the main office battery to transmit adequately. A Booster Some long-forgotten amateur scientist saw the need for a boosting device and then designed one. It was located part way up the line. at Malakauf Mine, and consisted’ of six four-quart jars filled with a solution of managanese. sal ammoniac, blue stone and zinc. Terminals of the telephone lead were passed through the solution, making this what was probably ‘the first telephone repeater station (as they are now called) ever built. Another problem arose, this one from the operation of a remote staticn at the ends of two different legs of the Ridge line. An operator had to be kept at the junction of these legs at English Mountain to answer calls and then switch them to the proper station. Jim Morris, Ridge’s wire chief and a famous mountain character, anticipated modern automatic _ telephone switching by devising a gadget which eliminated need for the operator. In July, 1879, he hooked up a clock device to the telephone line at English Mountain so that every half hour it would swing a switch in the opposite direction and connect one of the two remote stations. People on the main end of the line line would know the schedule and come on the lire when they wanted to talk to the remote station whose turn it was. Jim wound up and checked the time-switch on his weekly inspection trips. Local Service In the meantime. nothing much was being done about establishing local exchange telephone service in Grass Valley and Nevada City. Not until 1883 was any serious thought given the matter, and in this year the Sunset Telephone Company, 8 predecessor of Pacific Telephone, proposed to set up local service. Financial problems intervened, however, and it was not until December 1, 1894, that exchanges were inaugurated in the two communities. In Nevada City, the first’ telephone central office was located in Walter Vinton’s drug store on Broad Street The tiny, primitive ‘switchboard was manned by two of Vinton’s clerks: Joe O’Connell and Francis Conlon. As . Vinton time Pp board, L. Mo Steven: opposit hired, s ion wa erly a1 ley we 1900, v Muller ant dt years. In I took ¢ store a county Teleph¢ Stayed until . moved Mrs. was hi 1910 ar togethe as. Mi chief 0) Telepht Sunset. came m resigne: and M1 pointed ing unt There listed i (1895) These . Judi Natio Henr Daily Legg Unio) Geor, Hera) Mine Sheri Dr. C E, W Coun F. G. Ww. D Coun Dr. V Of th scribers appeare cery C ty office beok, ni Miner’s Scaddel Today a Ji-d: tional ] dry, an Gra: Hutel Valley disappo there is compan velopm phone e that W came n changes phone, phone Valley esfablis among ers as Telephc which t board vy Amor 128 .