Girl and phone: telephone service in Kostroma

On November 7, 1899, a state telephone station was opened in Kostroma.

For its placement bought the former house of merchants Durygin on Pavlovskaya street (now Mira Avenue, house 6). They were going to open a week earlier, the newspapers announced, but only on November 7, 1899, at 1 hour 49 minutes, the governor's telegram for No. 462 went to the capital:

Today, on the occasion of the prayer, the opening of a telephone network in Kostroma, arranged on the initiative of the local head of the office Promptov, took place in my presence and representatives of institutions and subscribers.

The pleasure was expensive. Prepayment for the year was 75 rubles – a huge amount of money at that time. Modern communication specialists calculated that in 1907 the fee for a telephone in a fire station was 37 rubles 50 kopecks. At the same time, firefighters spent 92 rubles 10 kopecks on heating in the same year, and 76 rubles 74 kopecks on uniforms of the entire city squad.

Initially, men worked as telephone operators, but by the beginning of the twentieth century, the technique was mastered by the fairer sex, as a rule, unmarried. And so the traditional appeal to the device was: “Mother, connect me, please...” And they connected.

The building of the first telephone station can be seen on the red route of daily excursions."Kostroma at 15:15.".

According to the materials of the scientific consultant of the project “Kostroma at 15:15” candidate of cultural studies Larisa Sizintseva.