Many North Carolinians find it difficult to remember how we lived, day to day, without cell phones.
Did you know that the first telephones began appearing in North Carolina in 1879? Or that the first long distance phone call made in North Carolina was between Raleigh and Wilmington on April 14, 1879? Even before cell phones, the rise of basic telephone service changed the lives of many in North Carolina.
Learn more in Clarence E. Horton, Jr.’s article, “Telephones,” from UNC Press’s Encyclopedia of North Carolina, now reprinted in NCpedia.
Link: http://ncpedia.org/telephones
Early telephone bill, Norfolk Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1918. Image courtesy of the NC Museum of History
