A century of the telephone in Zaragoza. Its implantation and advances (1878–1975)

In the early months of 1877, a year after Graham Bell introduced in the USA his first patent of the telephone, the first references to this invention started to arrive to Zaragoza. The following year, one could already buy telephone devices in the city. In spite of the encouraging start, the first urban telephone service took ten years to appear. Although the final years of the nineteenth century were characterized by a slow development of the telephone service, Zaragoza was favoured for its strategic geographic position, achieving very important advances, such as the interurban service in 1895 or the international line with France in 1912. However, the final takeoff of the telephone happened with the creation of the Compahia Telefonica Nacional de Espana (CTNE), which supposed important improvements in the interurban telephony and, above all, in the modern automatic telephone exchange installed in Zaragoza in 1927. The nationalization in 1945 and the concession of the telephone service in 1946 by the Spanish State to CTNE were essential to relaunch the installation of telephones and to be able to reach all the villages in the province of Zaragoza. In the 60´s, the continuous demographic expansion of the city made CTNE consider the creation of new telephone centrals.