Our historic communication technology correspondent Angus Young uncovers how the city hosted the second phone call ever. Sort of.
Talking to someone on the other side of the world by phone or zoom call is now part of everyday life for many of us. But back in the early 1870s the idea of being able to speak through a machine to another person in a different room was regarded as a bit bonkers. Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell changed all that in March 1875 when he used his own invention to transmit spoken words via a wire between two receivers for the first time. Based in Boston in America where he worked as a university professor, Bell secured a patent for his device and began staging demonstrations aimed at attracting potential investors. On a visit to London he made the UK’s first recorded telephone call using a private telegram wire belonging to the owners of a Mayair hotel which was connected to their home five miles away.
Bell displayed his device in public for the first time at the annual meeting of the British Science Association in London and it was here that an idea was hatched to stage a similar demonstration in Hull. The brainchild behind it was a man determined to put his home town on the map as the second place in the country where Bell’s invention could be seen in action. The son of the founder of the family law firm which still bears the family name, Albert Rollit was one of Hull’s leading figures of the day.
A lawyer and politician, he also held a keen interest in science and the arts and in 1875 became president of Hull’s Literary and Philosophical Society. His three-year term in office as the society’s president coincided with a surge in membership and the expansion of its premises in Albion Street which included a museum, lecture theatres, reading rooms, a subscription library and laboratories. As president, Rollit used his connections to secure big-name guest speakers, including novelist Anthony Trollope and journalist and adventurer Henry Stanley who had famously tracked down missing missionary and explorer David Livingstone in Africa.
For his final presidential address in 1877, Rollit decided to speak about electricity and, in particular, the telephone. Having built a “rude electrical machine” in his youth, he was convinced Bell’s invention was set to change the world. “I see no reason whatsoever to doubt that before long it will be in general use for communication between the house and the office, or stables, and in large hotels and thus effect an immense saving in labour and expense,” he told the meeting.
At the end of his speech, Rollit revealed he was going to stage an actual demonstration of this new wonder using the same prototype device displayed at the British Science Association. What his audience didn’t know was that he had already carried out secret trials before delivering the dramatic climax to his address. One trial involved running wires around different rooms in his house while another used a telegram wire strung between a post office and the fish market on Albert Dock.
“We have found it possible to distinguish the tones and inflections of different voices and to laugh, cough and sneeze at a distance of a mile,” he announced. “I am bound to say that there can be no comparison, either in principle or execution, between it and other telephones I have heard, such as those which transmit sounds of variable pitch, reproducing a sort of galvanic, sporadic and emasculated music.”
Rollit’s demonstration saw a wire strung between the society and the Church Institute 300 yards away on the other side of Albion Street. With the society’s museum curator John Harrison stationed in the Church Institute, Rollit and others took turns to speak to him via the machine from the society’s premises. At the other end of the line, Harrison confirmed to observers he could distinguish who was on the line by their different voices. The sensational event sparked a rush of new members with 120 joining the society that night.
Sadly, no record of any of the conversations whizzing across Albion Street was ever made. A contemporary report in the weekly Hull Packet newspaper simply says: “Various messages were transmitted to and fro.”
Rollit’s prophecy would come true. Twenty seven years later Hull’s municipal telephone department opened its first exchange for 1,000 subscribing customers. The rest – including our cream-coloured telephone boxes – is history.