Noonan said to the writer: “The telephone is only in its infancy. Years later, in the Blue Front Building, 207 Main street, to which the telephone exchange was moved in 1885, Mr. Its alarm system is distinct and its communication is instant.” “Anybody who has ears to listen and tongue to talk can use in. The equipment represented an outlay of $10,000. “It cannot fail,” he is quoted as saying when someone questioned the wisdom of investing money in the enterprise.
Noonan opened the exchange, hut the pioneer never lost his optimism. Less than a dozen subscribers were listed when Mr. There is no record of the number of calls made in those early days of telephoning, but it is recalled that they were few, even during the business hours, and not enough at night to keep one operator busy.
Pruden, of Ridgewood, and Miss Marion Makepeace, wife of Dr. Noonan opened the first telephone exchange, he employed two operators, Miss Margaret Van Houten, wife of Dr. Noonan to establish the first commercial telephone service in this part of the country with a crude equipment compared with the great modern and complex system in operation today under the direction of Donald Smith, serving 32,000 subscribers in this city alone who make an average 138,000 calls a day through 306 operators in three stations. His path was uphill and thorny, but the smile of confidence could not be effaced.Įfforts in the same direction had been made by others, but it remained for Mr. Noonan possessed these qualifications to a high degree. The spirit and courage of the pioneer were essential. The people of Paterson had read about “the wonderful invention,” but they were slow to take advantage of it. Noonan met with the same experience as the pioneers in every field of human progress. Resigning his position in Passaic, he came to Paterson and began his life’s work.Īt the outset Mr. He had been employed as ticket agent at the Erie station in Passaic and manager for the Western Union Telegraph Company, and he had won a high reputation as an expert telegraph operator. Bell at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and he was so impressed with the value of the invention that he planned at once to establish a telephone service in Paterson. Noonan witnessed a demonstration of the telephone by Mr. One year after that epochal event John F. Watson, in another room twenty feet away, saying, “Mr. Four years and six months earlier, June 2, 1875, Alexander Graham Bell, in the attic of a boarding house in Boston uttered the first message over a telephone wire when he communicated with his aid, Thomas A. It was the beginning of commercial telephone service in this part of the country. Extracted from PCHS Newsletter, Vol 1, No 4įifty-one years ago, all Paterson, at chat time a city with a population less than 50,000, marveled at a device that carried the human voice over wires into homes, business houses and factories from a central station on the third floor of the Morton Clark building, on the northwest corner of Main and Ellison streets.
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