Port Clinton’s Early Telephone History - Linda Higgins

Surprisingly (only to me?), the first telephone exchange in Port Clinton was started well over 100 years ago. And its rapid growth over the next century seems incredible. In 1887 the Central Union Telephone Company and its magneto (small electric generator) exchange served 13 subscribers here and provided long-distance service. By March of 1897, a franchise was granted and the locally owned Port Clinton Telephone Company began its operations above Schwab’s Drug Store on Madison Street. It moved to another Madison Street address shortly thereafter and remained there until a new building was constructed in 1962. The company was purchased by the Ottawa County Telephone Company in 1901 and the name changed to the New Ottawa County Telephone Company. Its headquarters were in Elmore, then the largest town in the county. By May of 1899, the company had grown rapidly and would continue to do so. By that time, the directory listed 134 subscribers.

In 1921 the New Ottawa County Telephone Company purchased the local Bell company (successor to Central Union Telephone Company) and the Bell company here closed. Frank A. Knapp and Associates acquired the New Ottawa Telephone Company in 1926. Exchanges at that time existed in Port Clinton, Oak Harbor, Elmore, Genoa, Bradner, Curtice, Millbury, Pemberville, Prairie Depot, and Put-in-Bay. They served 4,612 telephone users. (15,594 telephones were connected to these exchanges by March of 1962, a 339 percent increase in those 36 years.) The Public Utilities Commission approved the merger in 1927 of the Knapp telephone properties into a new corporation, the Northern Ohio Telephone Company, valued at $753,900. By 1962 the original exchange had grown to more than seven times that value, the plant investment at over $5,000,000.

In March of 1936, Port Clinton converted from its manual common battery to dial service, the Port Clinton exchange serving 1,020 telephones at that time. Operator long-distance dialing was installed here in May of 1950. By 1962, the Port Clinton exchange was serving 5,315 customers. The wider area, including Catawba Island, Marblehead, Oak Harbor, Genoa, Kelley’s Island, and Put-in-Bay, served 11,915. The local plant provided a vital service to Ottawa county and was an important factor in the economic welfare here, employing over 100 people in 1961, with a county payroll of $393,095.70.

On March 18, 1962, a new exchange was activated, changing all Port Clinton phone numbers from four or five digits to seven, in accordance with the national network; customers received a booklet explaining how to dial their own station-to-station long-distance calls. The cutover to the new system was a quick process compared to all that came before, as efficient as that process had been. By 1968 Port Clinton was updated again by adding telephone facilities near the Erie Industrial Park. A phone-number change in 1970 necessitated a new central office for Port Clinton, in addition to the main Port Clinton office. The new building was built next to the Erie Township Cemetery, across from the Industrial Park on State Route 2.

Meanwhile, enter the cell phone. Mobile phones had had their beginnings with a U.S. patent for wireless telephones in Kentucky in 1901. By the 1940s, AT&T engineers had developed mobile phone base stations. These early devices were not really phones, but two-way radios for emergency communication. One very powerful base station would cover a large area. In April of 1973, Motorola was the first company to mass-produce handheld mobile phones. The speed with which landline companies had been growing leveled off and cell phone companies took hold, for better or for worse. As “they” might say, the rest really is history.