It fell upon his brother, Walter S. Strowger, to carry development and promotion further, along with a great man, Joseph Harris, who also helped with promotion and investment money. Without Harris, soon to be the organizer and guiding force behind Automatic Electric, dial service may have taken decades longer for the Bell System to recognize and develop. Competition by A.E. forced the Bell System to play switching catch-up, something they really only accomplished in the 1940s with the introduction of crossbar. And with only a few references to interrupt, let us return to the narrative. Telephone Cord History 1.
Many people ask when the first spiral telephone cord was introduced.
Well, that depends on how you define a cord. Many early manufacturers separated a handset's four wires into two cotton covered bundles, intertwining the housings like a braid. That's like holding two strings side by side and twisting them together. One loop around the other. If so, the date of the first telephone spiral cord will be hard to track, indeed, given the numbers of manufacturers who did it, and the fact that twisted electrical cords predated telephone cords.