The Telephone Company of Ireland, 1878–93: An Exploration of the Early Marketing, Development, Expansion, Financing and Users of Telephony

Abstract

This article provides the first comprehensive study of the early development of telephony in Ireland. It begins by exploring the technology's promotion, highlighting that this drew on a much older tradition of public displays of electricity often for educational and recreational purposes. The article builds on this overview of electrical display to discuss early telephone users and the establishment of the Telephone Company of Ireland in 1882 to expand telephone provision in the three southern Irish provinces of Leinster, Connaught and Munster. In doing so, it demonstrates that like telephone development elsewhere the company initially focused on businesses but was quick to realise the importance of residential customers. In tracing the history of the company, the article seeks to explore the difficulties it faced in securing sufficient investment to promote this revolutionary technology and expand the nascent telephone network. It shows that ultimately the failure to do so lead to its purchase by the British-based National Telephone Company in 1893.