Odessa Telephone Exchange
Odessa, Ector County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Began operation about 1897, with Edna Fielding as "central" (operator). After Miss Fielding's death in 1902, the Rev. G. B. Ely, a baptist minister, purchased the exchange. Pioneer rancher A. Quincy Cooper bought the system in 1911, and extended service to rural areas, utilizing barbed wire fences as telephone lines. While checking his repairs on a barbed wire line on Jan. 25, 1915, Cooper interrupted the first transcontinental telephone call between Alexander Graham Bell in New York and his assistant in San Francisco. In 1928, the exchange became part of the southwestern bell telephone company.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Odessa's telephone exchange opened around 1897 in the early years of rural Texas telephony, when connecting far-flung ranches meant improvising with whatever ran across the land. Under pioneer rancher A. Quincy Cooper, service reached the countryside by stringing calls along barbed-wire fence lines. In a remarkable coincidence, Cooper's repair work on one such line in 1915 briefly broke into the first transcontinental telephone call between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, and the exchange was folded into Southwestern Bell in 1928.
Why it matters
It captures the ingenuity of rural America wiring itself into the modern communications age, and its brush with Bell's transcontinental call ties a small West Texas town to a landmark moment in technology.
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Related people
- · Edna Fielding
- · G. B. Ely
- · A. Quincy Cooper
- · Alexander Graham Bell
Related events
- · First transcontinental telephone call (1915)
Themes & tags
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