The first Middletown exchange was started by a young lawyer named Charles H. Bundy. He had decided that Middletown was a good place to open a law practice. Business did not come very fast, so Bundy became interested in the phone industry. He was unsure of the telephone’s future, but he decided to take a chance just the same.
Bundy secured the rights from the Bell Company for Warren and Butler Counties, except for the city of Hamilton. He also received permission to run wires over the counties’ roads. Having obtained those rights and being short of cash, he drove over the roads with a horse and buggy and staked the locations for the poles to carry the lines.
Mrs. Bundy once recalled that “after the exchanges in Middletown, Hamilton, Waynesville, and Darrtown were built, the toll lines were put in. I went with Mr. Bundy over in Warren County, and I assure you the putting up of those lines was very difficult …
“We drove a horse and buggy. I stayed in the carriage. Mr. Bundy had a line attached to the buggy (to measure even distances), and he would go ahead about 200 feet and drive a stake. I would then drive up to the stake and he would go ahead and put in another one, and so on. We went all over Warren County that way, so that I helped to build the lines.”
The first exchange was installed in Bundy’s law office. It was a small affair adapted to service 200 subscribers. Like the law profession, starting a telephone business was not easy. Many businessmen were skeptical about what benefit the telephone might be to them. Among the first subscribers was the Board of Education. They had phones installed in two schools, the North and South buildings, and used them to great advantage.
In the early days, subscribers were called by name instead of number. To place a call, an individual would first contact the operator. After a brief chat about the weather, the operator would, in turn, ring the desired party.
Answering the phone was a totally different matter. Each subscriber had a separate series of rings which isolated him from the other subscribers. When you heard your “code” (that is, the proper series of rings), then you knew to answer. It was even possible to listen to other conversations, and if you learned the code, you could determine who was doing the talking. The early operators were usually up-to-date on local news. Along with dealing with trials and tribulations of a new business, Bundy also had problems at first with subscribers trying to swear at each other over the phone.
After a period of time, there were exchanges located in most of the major cities. The telephone then spread into the smaller communities. This brought the age of long distance calls.
If you called Chicago, for instance, you would ask your operator to patch you in to Indianapolis. Then the Indianapolis operator would connect you with the Chicago operator who would connect you to the party that you were trying to calling. The process was a manual operation in which your call was spliced together by various operators.
As long as there have been phones, there have been phone bills. The early residence rate was $2.50 per month and $5.00 for businesses. There was an additional charge if you wanted a telephone with a bell.
In 1884, the Bundy owned-and-operated Middletown telephone exchange was sold to Dayton and Xenia men. The result of that merger was The Miami Telephone Company. The exchange was then located in the Leibee Building on the corner of Third Street (Central Avenue) and Main Street.
In 1902, ownership of the local telephone system was transferred to The Central Union Company, which was reorganized in 1908 as the Middletown Telephone Company. In 1921, Ohio Bell purchased the system.
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