Fulton Telephone Exchange
In 1878, only two years after Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone, the first exchange in Missouri was established in St. Louis – not surprising for the 4th largest city in the nation. Exchanges soon followed in St. Joseph, Kansas City, Hannibal, and – more surprisingly – in Fulton. The arrival of the telephone in Fulton is the story of two men named Bell: the inventor of the device and local architect M. F. Bell who, in March 1882, wrote to the inventor asking for 50 telephone sets so that he might open an exchange in his hometown. His request was referred to the Missouri and Kansas Telephone Company which held the licensing rights for western Missouri. By December, a small exchange with 49 subscribers began operating in a room over Sam Nichol’s drugstore on the west side of the square. Residential customers paid $3 per month for telephone service while businesses were charged a dollar more. On Wednesday evenings all subscribers were connected to enjoy concerts by a local orchestra. A microphone attached to the pulpit of a Fulton church also enabled those who were ill to listen to the Sunday evening sermon.
M. F. Bell was named manager of the telephone office for the standard salary of $25 a month. By 1888, the Buffum Exchange, a competing service, set off a period of “telephone wars” with Bell’s company until the two companies merged in 1915 to become the Missouri Central Telephone Company owned by Southwestern Bell.
For two years of this rivalry, Bell took no salary as he worked to ensure the survival of his exchange.
In 1915, M.F. Bell became President and General Manager of the Missouri Central Telephone Company with an increase in pay to $100 per month. The following year, the building pictured in this week’s postcard was constructed to house the newly merged company. Bell had purchased the lot in 1908 because it was the only remaining corner lot downtown and sold it to Southwestern Bell in 1914. He also designed the structure and supervised its construction.
Bell never lost his enthusiasm for the telephone; near the end of his life, he wrote, “My hobby has been the telephone ever since its invention. I…believe every man should have a goal in life – my goal is to reach 50 years of continued service in the telephone game.” Although Bell died in 1929, a few years short of his goal, thanks to him, Fulton was the first town in mid-Missouri to have a telephone exchange.