Pillsbry e s (1 resultados)

8vo. [4], vi, [2], vii-viii, 494 pp., w/ supplemental pp. at front printed on pink-tinted paper, leaf of Chinese Telephone Exchange customers & businesses in Chinese facing English text, & Oregon sections pp. 361-416 also printed on pink-tinted paper. Beige-gray buckram, lettering & borders in red & black on front cover, map of Washington, Oregon & California on back cover depicting long distance lines of 21,000 miles of copper wire (some soiling, thumbing to covers, original jute braid at head of spine still intact, ex-lib markings on title, & spine, a couple stamps), still a VG- copy. First edition, thus, with supplements, of this pioneering telephone directory for the Pacific States Telephone Companies which in 1900 became the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Co., and managed the West coast operations of the national AT&T, or Bell system. Based out of their Richadson-inspired Romanesque building in San Francisco on Steiner Street, the PSTC (later PT&T) had grown quickly from less than 1000 subscribers in 1891 to nearly 50,000 by 1899, with 36,541 in California, 4,177 in Oregon, and 7,156 in Washington State, and this directory includes the very scarce leaf of the Idaho subscribers as well, typically lacking. The first long distance telephone conversation held between San Francisco and Los Angeles was in 1894, and the company encouraged residences to obtain their own lines at 5¢ per day. While telephone rates in California varied from 10¢ to 50¢, those in Oregon, Washington & Idaho were far higher, with Zone Z no time limit running up to $ 1.00 per 3 minute use. Of particular interest is the list of subscribers in 1899, seven years prior to the 1906 Earthquake & Fire of Chinese subscribers in English and Chinese for the Chinese American Telephone Exchange. Founded in Chinatown originally in 1887, a public telephone pay station was installed in the Occidental Newspaper in 1891, and in 1894 a small switchboard was set up with Chinese-American telephone operators. John Sabin (d. 1906) and Louis Glass would both later feature prominently in the trials and public hearings held in the Progressive Era to stamp out "The System" of graft and bribery in San Francisco. Worldcat locates 4 copies w/ 492 pp. (Nat. Hist. Mus. LA, CA, NV State Lib., Sacto Pub. Lib., Yale (very incomplete & damaged)). …