Technology has brought mankind many fascinating new toys.

The telephone (cellphone, smartphone) is one at the head of the class. A must have consumer item. The upgrades continue to flow from manufacturers faster and faster each year.

It hasn't been this way forever. If you're my age, then you lived with the rotary dial phones, the party lines, and eventually the push button model. Alexander Graham Bell would be amazed at what has become of his invention.

Which begs the question, "When did Casper get its first phone?"

In the first years of the 20th century, electricity and telephones became available in town. Dr. Frederic Salathe and banker and sheep man C. H. King worked together to build a power plant adjacent to the first oil refinery, and the first electric lights from the Casper Electric Company were lighted on June 12, 1900. Telephone service began on March 22, 1902, when Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone installed 49 telephones. By 1910, there were 300 telephones; by 1925, with phone service and population booming, there were 5,600.
Time and technology has allowed the City of Casper to see many vast improvements in the quality of life for her citizens. The telephone is just one of example of those improvements.
Watch a cool old video from 1936 explaining, "How to use a phone."

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