Beginnings of the telephone service

After the invention of the telephone in 1876, telephony developed rapidly, more rapidly in the USA than elsewhere. Telephone exchanges were introduced from 1878, interurban links coming into use as the density of exchanges grew. Technical difficulties, commercial rivalries, and, outside the USA, governmental policies, held back the development of long-distance or trunk lines until the middle 1880s. In 1891 Britain scored a notable success in providing telephony between London and Paris, although there was no effective internal long-distance system until 1896