The Stockholm telephone tower that almost deprived city residents of sunlight (9 photos + 1 video)

At the end of the 19th century, the telephone was considered a marvel of engineering and was quite widely used, but the simple idea of ​​hiding cables underground somehow eluded humanity's best minds.





In every more or less large city with a significant number of subscribers, eerie structures loomed over pedestrians, entangled in bundles of wires like a spider's web.



Telephony at that time was an expensive luxury, affordable only to the wealthy. In Sweden, the first public telephone exchange was opened in Stockholm by the Bell Telephone Company in 1880. Initially, there were only 121 subscribers. The company charged them between 160 and 280 Swedish kronor, depending on where the customer lived and how far they were from the exchange. In today's money, the subscription fee was between 9,000 and 16,000 kronor (approximately $1,100 to $1,960). Impressive, right?





The old "Telephonetornet" telephone tower in Stockholm, Sweden, with approximately 5,500 telephone lines, circa 1890

But Bell's monopoly didn't last long. In 1883, it faced serious competition from the Stockholm General Telephone Company (SAT), founded by engineer and entrepreneur Henrik Ture Cedergren. He set an ambitious goal: to bring telephones to every home. Cedergren set connection and subscription rates that were ridiculous for the time, and the number of subscribers simply skyrocketed.



By 1886, Stockholm had more telephones than any other major city in the world, with 4,832 subscribers, of which approximately 1,600 were registered with Bell. By 1887, SAT had become the largest telephone company in the world, and a year later, it simply bought out Bell's Stockholm business.



The network was extremely vulnerable to weather conditions and the elements.

In those blessed days of telephony, there were no substations. Each subscriber was connected to the central station by a separate wire, which was pulled through the air. And all these thousands of wires converged on the main station from all corners of the city. To support this mass of cables, that gigantic tower was built.



In winter, the structure looked especially beautiful and eerie.

The iconic Telephone Tower, or Telefontornet, opened its metal arms in 1887. More than 5,500 telephone lines, totaling approximately 5,000 kilometers, converged on it. As old photographs clearly show, it was a nightmare: wires protruded in every direction, and the entire system was horribly vulnerable to wind, snow, and rain. Local residents hated the tower fiercely, considered it ugly, and even complained that it blocked the sun.



At this single connection point, the tower connected approximately 5,500 telephones.

The press and public vilified the tower at every opportunity, and the telephone company had no choice but to announce a competition to "decorate" it. In 1890, the tower acquired four decorative turrets at the corners. City flags were now raised on them on major holidays.



By 1913, the entire network had been moved underground, and the Telefontornet had lost its function. The remains of the structure remained a landmark for several decades.

However, by the beginning of the 20th century, the Telefontornet was rapidly becoming obsolete. Engineers finally realized that hiding the wires underground was a much more sensible idea than hanging them on monstrous structures. By 1913, the entire network had been moved underground, and the tower had lost its original purpose. The empty structure remained a landmark for several decades. For a time, the telephone company even managed to hang advertising posters on the tower.



But its history was already predetermined. In 1952, the tower caught fire, severely damaging its structure, and was demolished the following year. Thus, safety considerations prevailed over good old nostalgia.