The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-11-02
Plan A Unique
 Telephone Club ONLY ENIPLOYES OF SERVICE DATING PRIOR TO 1885 TO
 BE ELIGIBLE. Organization to Be Known as Tele- phone Pioneers of America-EB.
 Baker an Organizer.

New Haven, Nov. 2E. B. Baker, formerly general superintendent of the Southern New England Telephone
 his way to Boston, where society
 is to be organized to be known as the
 Telephone Pioneers of America.
 MT. Baker is general manager of
 the Minnesota Central Telephone Com
 pany-a position he has filled for the last six years with Headquarters in Minneapolis. The society about to be
 formed in Boston will be restricted
 in membership to telephone men who
 were in the telephone business prior
 to 1885.
 The oldest commercial telephone
 switch board exchange in existence is one installed by MT. Baker in Meri- den, Conn.,. in 1878.
 The first commercial telephone ex- New Haven, January 2S, 1878, by G. W. Coy, then of Milford, now resi-
 dent of Massachusetts. In 1878 Mir. Coy was manager of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company with of fees under the Yale National Bank, corner of State Nand Chapel streets. At this time he also operated a local call box telegraph messenger system, sim liar to the present American and Pos- tai district telegraph systems.
 It was in this district telegraph ser vice that he found he could attach a telephone to his telegraph wires and 1t was he that evolved and construct ed the first telephone commercial ex- change in the world. This was in the present Boardman building, across the street from the Yale National Bank, where he opened a local telephone ex- change affair < | E. B. Baker at the time was super | intendent of the fire alarm system in Meriden, Conn, and being greatly in- | terested in the telephone he came to | New Haven, visited with MT. Coy and constructed similar switch board in l Meriden (the second switch board in | the world), which he opened and ope-
 rated in Meriden, January 31, 1878. The original switch board made by Mir. Coy was mounted on the sheath | ing partition in his office in the I tion was removed the switch board was necessarily destroyed.
 | The one made by MT. Baker, three | days later, was an exact duplicate o1 1 MT. Coy's, but was mounted separate 1 ly on black walnut. MT. Bakers
 therefore. stands today the oldest m 1 the world. For several years it was on exhibition in the Smithsonian in l stitute in Washington, D. c. It Is al present in the historical collection in l the vaults of the Southern New Eng l land Telephone Company on Court street. in this city.
 The third switch board was prob- l ably made about this time by Thomas l B. Doolitt1e. at present resident o1
 Pine Orchard, but at that time l manufacturer in Bridgeport, Conn
 He was operating at the time a social | telegraph exchange in Bridgeport Il was MT. Doolittle who invented the hard drawn copper wire that is now universally used by telephone and tele- graph companies. There are millions 1 of miles of it now in use.
 Both Mr. Coy and MT. Baker will l be guests of the Southern New Eng land Telephone Company, through It's
 vice president and general manager James T. Moran, at the meeting in Boston today and tomorrow It IS worthy of note that the Southern New England Telephone Company has more employees who have been connected with the telephone business prior to
 1885 than any other telephone company | in the United States.