"Once my telephone rang..."

The galloping rise of urban and factory settlements' population in the Urals in last quarter of XIX century brought the rapid development of telephone communication in the region. In 1882 the exchange was assembled on Verkh-Iset plant (the first exchange started operating in an American town of New-Haven in 1878).

In February of 1892 the first Ekaterinburg city telephone exchange (CTE) rated at 100 numbers was assembled, and in March it was launched. The exchange was located in a small two-storey house at the corner of Nurovsky public garden and Pochtovy lane (now, A. Popov public garden, next to the General Post Office). The launch was initiated by the eminent townsmen, mainly by the merchants. Not only merchants paid for the installation of their telephones but also they sponsored that of fire department, hospitals and schools. Even regarding the bulky technology of manual connection it was enough room as there were only 68 first subscribers. Before the World War I there were 600 subscribers in Ekaterinburg.  

The major part of the staff of the exchange consisted of young girls. They had to be of "medium" level of literacy (that is, able to read and write) and of legal age - over 21. A remarkable detail was that at work girls had to wear only strict high-necked dresses, ideally the dark ones: "out of trouble", as the proverb says. For "telephone girls" it was quite hard toil - 8-10 hours a shift, and each girl made around 100 connections per hour. However, their salaries were high enough at local standards.  

At first time of the Ekaterinburg CTE operations the telephone line was only available for well-to-do persons. That is why "share telephone lines" when one line served up to 5 telephone sets were widespread. Some richest townsmen, in their turn, could afford themselves to have several lines, as, for instance, a miller merchant E. Pervushin, whose business-card was "decorated" with three numbers. However, in 1910s a telephone set was no longer a whim of rich men but also an ordinary thing for state establishments, hotels, shops, etc.  

The first exchange was exploited till the middle 1920s. However, the "old telephone era" in Sverdlovsk ended up only in 1935 when the first automated exchange "D-1" rated at 10 000 numbers appeared.