The Telephone comes to Rochester

Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone instrument in 1876 and demonstrated it for an amazed public at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in the same year. In 1877, after Bell gave two of his devices to friends in Grand Rapids, Michigan, these instruments became the first telephones in Michigan. The interest generated by the Grand Rapids telephones spread quickly to Detroit; and by the end of 1877 several Detroit police stations and the offices of the Detroit Free Press had installed telephones.

Here in Oakland County, the telephone made its first appearance in 1878. Almon Starr, who owned a brickyard near Crooks and Thirteen Mile Roads, was present at the Philadelphia exhibition of Bell’s telephone. In May 1878, the Birmingham Eccentric reported that Starr’s son had built a telephone line linking his house with his father’s. Royal Oak had the first telephone exchange in the county by the fall of 1879, and an exchange in Pontiac followed soon thereafter.
An 1883 letter published in the Rochester Era offered telephone service to Rochester residents.

In Rochester, druggist John T. Norton was an early advocate of bringing telephone service to the community. He and Rochester Era publisher Will Fox corresponded with an agent for the fledgling Michigan Bell system, and in June 1883, Rochester was invited to join the system at a cost of $800. The price was apparently a bit steep, and it took a few months for the plan to come to fruition. The Rochester Era reported in February 1884 that a deal had been struck at a cost of $500. All subscribers to the telephone system would be given tickets equal in value to the amount of their subscriptions; the tickets, in turn, could be redeemed for telephone calls. The system was roughly analogous to the way we might purchase minutes for cell phones today.

Because of Norton’s efforts and those of Rochester businessman Marcus Carlton, who secured all of the subscriptions to fund the project, a telephone line was built between Rochester and Pontiac. The sole telephone device was located in Norton’s drugstore, and subscribers had to go to the store to make or receive calls.

The primitive arrangement with the single telephone unit did not last long. Enthusiasm for the new form of communication spread quickly as more and more businessmen jumped on the bandwagon and installed their own telephones. In those early days of telephone development, there were many competing companies with overlapping areas of service. In Oakland County, New State Telephone Company was organized in 1897, and Rochester’s village council granted it a franchise in the same year. The franchise ordinance specified that subscribers who signed on for a term of five years could be charged no more than $18 per year for a residential phone, or $24 per year for a business phone. Bert Norton, son of druggist John T. Norton, operated the first Rochester exchange established by New State Telephone Company from 1897 until 1907. In 1911, Michigan Bell Telephone Company absorbed New State as consolidation of the smaller operations got underway.

While more residents and merchants in the village became telephone subscribers in the early twentieth century, phone service to the farms of rural Avon Township advanced at a slower pace. One exception was along Tienken Road, where eight farm families joined together to build an extension from the Rochester exchange called the Ross Farm Line.

By 1937, as Rochester emerged from the Great Depression, Michigan Bell saw a huge increase in demand for telephone service in the community. There were approximately 750 telephone customers in Rochester and Avon in 1937, an increase of almost 100 percent over the previous year. Rochester’s exchange now warranted modernization and expansion, and Michigan Bell announced that it would build a new exchange building on the southeast corner of Third and Walnut Streets. (This building is now the home of the Homer Wing American Legion Post.)

The expansion meant that Rochester would receive direct-dial service for the first time. Since they were accustomed to having all of their calls connected by an operator, Rochester residents had to be instructed in the use of dial devices by the phone crews who installed the new telephones in their homes and businesses.