Direct connection

To celebrate 150 years since the first telephone call was made, Michael Kay and Coreen McGuire describe how the device reshaped social interactions in Britain - and the somewhat surprising ways it was first used

- 

In autumn 1883, an unusual news story captured the imagination of the British public. It was a tale of deception, fraud - and telephones.

On Friday 21 September, a young barrister's clerk in Birmingham, Robert Danks, set in motion a plan to commit fraud. First he forged a message from a solicitor asking his boss, Jesse Herbert, to travel out of town. Next, he telephoned the office of Herbert's friend, Alfred Young. Speaking to the clerk, Danks impersonating Herbert – said he had been called away but had left his cheque book at home. Would Mr Young please lend him £5 (equivalent to more than £500 today - five times Danks' weekly wage)? Deceived, the clerk agreed, and was told to expect Danks to collect the money – which he did, absconding with it the next day.

The story was reported at length across the country - not least because of the novel and ingenious (for the time) method of Danks' deceit. This was, one commentator noted, the first time the telephone had been used for such fraud - a landmark of sorts in the technology's short history.

Sound idea

The first practical functioning telephone was developed by Scottish-born engineer and inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who lived and worked in Canada and the US during the second half of the 19th century. He worked extensively on hearing and speech, experimenting with hearing-aid devices and then acoustic telegraphy - efforts that led to the development of the telephone.

Bell was issued the US patent for his telephone on 7 March 1876 - 150 years ago this month. The Bell Telephone Company was established the following year, and within a decade tens of thousands of telephone sets were in use across the US.