Around 1912 the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company produced three photo books.
These books are scanned from our museum library. They are described as “Inventory of Exchange Telephone Plant, San Francisco, California, as at December 31, 1912.”
We only have books 13, 14 and 15 (in Roman numerals) in our collection.
If someone knows more about books 1 – 12 please let us know in the comment section below.
According to the text in the first photo book, most of these photographs were taken at various times during the six months prior to May 1, 1914, though some are much older.
The photographs are divided into several subjects:
- Pole Line Construction
- Aerial Cable Construction
- Aerial Wire Construction
- Underground Conduit Construction
- Underground Cable Construction
- Central Office Equipment
- Subscriber Stations
- Buildings
- General Equipment
- Miscellaneous
Originally build for the Bay Cities Home Telephone Company and purchased by the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co.
This building contained the Cities automatic equipment and some of the Executive Offices.
Photos like the 333 Grant Ave. photo above are a fun example of comparing some of these old photos with today’s situation.
We may be adding more of these comparison photos in the future.
If you have any comments or remarks about these 1912 San Francisco Telephone photos, please use the comments form below.
Be sure to check out another black and white photo collection on our site:
Photo Exhibit: One Bell System. It works. “One hundred Years of Telephony in America” 1876 – 1976.
Also note: Comments to this site will be reviewed before they appear online.