First telephone news service

Before radio emerged as a technology to broadcast news and entertainment to the masses, a Hungarian inventor called Tivadar Puskas perfected a system whereby broadcasts could be made over a telephone exchange. The first "telephone news service" – called Telefon Hirmondo – went live in Budapest in 1893. The service was offered to customers on a subscription basis – not just to private individuals, but also to businesses such as barber shops, clubs and restaurants. Existing telephone exchanges could not route one call to more than 50 people at a time, beyond which none of the listeners would hear anything. Puskas’s key contribution was the multiplex switchboard, which meant as many as half a million people could simultaneously listen to a broadcast. In many ways broadcasting has now come full circle, in that once again we all access news, entertainment and data using our phones.