March 31, 1981 – Iowa City’s last telephone operator – working for Northwestern Bell Telephone – concludes 100 years of continuous telephone exchange service.
When Alexander Graham Bell introduced his new innovation at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, no one believed the telephone was much more than a plaything. But within five years of when the first telephone exchange office opened in Iowa City (1881), the whole city was buzzing with excitement. Over the next 100 years, the telephone transformed everything. Come read how it all started.
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