NORTHWESTERN BELL TELEPHONE COMPANY

Ink blotter. Photo courtesy: Bob Reding

NORTHWESTERN BELL TELEPHONE COMPANY. The earliest documented telephone exchange in Northwestern Bell territory was opened by the Western Union Company in Keokuk, Iowa, on September 1, 1878. Using superior equipment designed by Thomas Edison and Elisha Gray, Western Union was competitive with the local licensee of the National Bell Telephone Company in Boston. On November 10, 1879, Western Union settled a Bell patent infringement suit by getting completely out of the phone business and selling all of its exchanges, including the Keokuk exchange, to the Bell Company.

In the fall of 1878, the Northwestern Telephone Company opened an "experimental" exchange in Minneapolis-located in City Hall, it served the city government as well as the Nicollet Hotel and Pillsbury Mills. This exchange was the forerunner of the Bell-licensed Northwestern Telephone Exchange Company which was incorporated on December 10, 1878.

When the Northwestern Telephone Exchange Company was organized, it had authorized capital stock of $10,000.

Telephone companies in the Northwestern Bell Group included the Tri-State Telephone Company, the Dakota Central Telephone Company, the Iowa Telephone Company, the Nebraska Telephone Company and the Northwestern Telephone Exchange.

Casper E. Yost served as the president of all the companies. It was a confusing arrangement to regulators, employees and even to the parent company, AT&T. In a letter to AT&T, Yost explained that when he was answering a question, making a proposal or discussing a problem in his correspondence with AT&T, he would use the letterhead of the particular company to which the question, problem or proposal related. One problem with this arrangement, especially for local telephone staffers and historians, is that the carbons of Yost's letters contained no letterheads.

Things became less confusing when the Tri-State and Dakota Central companies were merged into the Northwestern Exchange Company. In 1909, a single general office staff for the Iowa, Nebraska and Exchange companies was established in Omaha.

On December 10, 1920, Iowa Telephone changed its name to Northwestern Bell Telephone Company. On January, 1921, the Nebraska and Northwestern Exchange companies were merged into the new company. While the new company was incorporated in Iowa, its headquarters remained in Omaha.

In 1976, Northwestern Bell sold access lines in the Midland, Philip, Martin, White River, Milesville, and Hayes exchanges to Golden West Telephone, a small telephone cooperative in South Dakota.

The Northwestern Bell headquarters, now the Century Link building, was located at 118 South 19th Street in Omaha, Nebraska. The Northwestern Bell name is still licensed for use today on telephone equipment produced by Unical Enterprises; otherwise, the NWBT name has disappeared.

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Source:

"Northwestern Bell," Wikipedia, Online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_Bell

The 1923 and 1929 Dubuque City Directory listed 824 Locust.

The 1948 Dubuque Classified Business Directory through 1989 Dubuque City Directory listed 900 Locust.