The Shamokin Valley Exchange Opens in Sunbury

The Shamokin Valley Telephone Company opened its local exchange in Sunbury on Monday, July 27, 1896, according to a notice in the following day's Mount Carmel Daily News. The company name linked the item to the region, but the opening described was in Sunbury, not another beginning for Shamokin's earlier telephone office.

The brief estimated that twenty-five or thirty telephones were connected at the county seat. Others were being connected as rapidly as possible. An exchange could open for business while the work of adding instruments continued; the notice described service beginning and a customer network still being assembled.

The paper expected everything to be working smoothly within a few days. That was an expectation rather than a completed inspection or a final subscriber count. Its immediate news was the exchange's reported opening, with a modest group of connected telephones and further connections underway.