Pitkäkorvan saapuminen Pernajan pitäjään

herrasväen kokemuksia ja ajatuksia puhelimesta 1884-1891 yksityisen kirjeenvaihdon valottamana

Authors

• Maria Vainio-Kurtakko

Abstract

The telephone comes to Pernaja municipality: What private letters say about how the gentry received the telephone in 1884–1891

The telephone was introduced at the Philadelphia world exposition in 1876. In Finland, the first telephone calls were made in Helsinki in 1877, and from the beginning of the 1880s, telephone companies were established in many cities. Pernaja is a rural municipality between the towns of Porvoo and Loviisa. In both towns an internal telephone network was established in 1884. Baron Viktor Magnus von Born, who was a prominent figure in Pernaja, declared that he would not have a telephone in his house, the manor of Sarvilahti (Sarvlaks). However, after the telephone was installed at the Sarvilahti manor in 1886, V. M. von Born soon realised how practical it was. While away in Helsinki on his many commissions of trust and political engagements, he could manage the manor with the help of the telephone. From Helsinki, he wrote to his wife that the sound of her voice through the telephone made him feel young again. Baroness Hulda von Born (née Berndtson) had tried the telephone at her cousin’s manor already in 1884. She considered it a very interesting invention and was happy to get one at Sarvilahti. It looks like, in practice, the telephone proved a disappointment for Hulda von Born. One could not talk about private matters over the telephone, because the employees at the telephone centrals could listen to the conversations. Therefore, traditional letters retained their status within the von Born family. The telephone was used for messages of a practical kind.