1878 Coffin

Charles Williams Jr.Charles Williams Jr.1862–1881Charles Williams Jr. operated an electrical shop at 109 Court Street in Boston that became the birthplace of the telephone industry. Thomas Edison worked there in 1868-69, and Thomas Watson joined in 1872, where he met Alexander Graham Bell in 1874. Bell and Watson's pivotal telephone experiments took place in the shop's garret. In 1877, Williams began manufacturing the first commercial telephones for the Bell Telephone Company, including the famous Coffin Set. The first permanent residential telephone line connected his shop to his Somerville home. Williams sold the operation to Western Electric in 1882. · Circa: 1878
Categories: wood, American  ·  Contributor/source: Tom Adams
1878 Coffin

About This Phone

This was one of the first commercially available phones. Alexander Graham Bell had his laboratory at 109 Court Street in Boston, in a building occupied by Charles Williams, a contract manufacturer of telegraph and other electrical equipment. It was here that he and his assistant made the first working telephone ('Watson, come here'). Later Bell contracted with Williams and other companies to make greater volumes of the devices, such as this early 'coffin' model. This is the 1878 model with the 'slide manual switch,' and could be used with either one or two receivers.