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1016
XIII. COMMUNICATIONS OF 8WBDBN.
H. T. Cedergren, C. E., a man deserving of exceedingly great praise for what
he has done for the development of the telephones in Sweden. The fee of the
new company for a private line was fixed at 100 kronor (£ 51/») for the whole
of Stockholm (which was to be increased to 125 kronor (6 i 18 sh.) when the
number of subscribers reached 1,500). A still lower fee was rendered possible
by the employment of an automatic switch apparatus, invented by Cedergren and the
manufacturer L. M. Ericsson in Stockholm, by means of which several (as many
as 5) subscribers, dwelling in the same neighbourhood, could have the same line to
the exchange. The fee was then fixed at a minimum of 80 kronor. During the course
of the next few years these prices by degrees were brought to their present low
point (see below). Both companies continued to grow until 1885, when
Stockholm was, both relatively and absolutely, the richest in telephones of any town
in the world. After that time, the number of the subscribers to the Bell Company
sank lower and lower until, at the close of the decade 1881/90, the General
Telephone Co. purchased the greater number of its shares and, in 1892, the net of
the Bell Co. was changed to a local system in a part of the town called
Östermalm. In 1898, at whose close its subscribers in that district numbered more
than 2,500, the Bell Co. purchased from the other company its plants for limited
calls in other parts of the town, and it now seems to have a promising future
before it.
The General Telephone Co. continued to increase rapidly. Already after
about six years of activity, it had 5,000 subscribers and had managed, during
the same period, to connect twelve country towns with the capital by means of the
telephone, and, besides, carried on telephone operations in two more distant country
towns — Söderhamn, with the surrounding district, and Jönköping. The company
also entertained the idea of erecting long-distance lines to Gothenburg, Malmö,
and Sundsvall, but the Government refused to grant concession to the application
made in 1888. In return for a concession (for which, see below) received May 1,
1891, the company bound itself to sell to the state all the erections it had set
up outside the district conceded to it of 70 kilometers in radius from the center
of Stockholm, and not to carry on telephone business outside of this district.
During the whole period of its existence, the company has paid
watchful heed to all inventions and improvements respecting the
telephone and has introduced them into its telephone net with praiseworthy
celerity. It began, for instance, already in the spring of 1884 (probably
as the first in Europe) to employ the multiple-board, set up metallic
circuit lines in a country town as early as 1888, and, during the years
1892/93, changed the whole of its great Stockholm net into a
double-lined one. During 1889 the company applied for permission to lay
down underground cables in the streets of the capital, but it was only
in 1895 that it could begin with the execution of the work, which is
now completed. By this means it will mostly be possible to avoid the
damages occasioned to the telephone net time after time, by snowstorms,
chiefly in Stockholm where the clusters of wires are very large. In
1891, an attempt was made to introduce a subscription of 10 kronor
annually (11 shillings!) plus a fee of 10 öre (l’/s d.) for each
conversation from a subscriber’s apparatus, but the attempt proved to be so
economically unfavourable that it had to be abandoned after a couple
of years.
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