During the years after the First World War, the telephone ceased to be a status symbol of the very rich. It reached out to include a new breed of users - Britain's middle classes - and was increasingly found in ordinary homes - becoming part of everyday life in towns, suburbs and rural villages all over the country.
Sir Stephen Tallents was an advertising high-flier of the 1930s, who possibly did more than anyone else to expand the market for the telephone.
Between 1926 and 1933, Tallents' reputation as an imaginative and effective civil servant, led to his selection as Secretary of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), where he specialised in promoting awareness of the British Empire through an innovative programme of press and poster campaigns, exhibitions, shops and radio broadcasts. Foreshadowing his later work at the Post Office, he set up (under John Grierson) the EMB Film Unit, which pioneered the production of documentary films.
With the demise of the EMB he was appointed Public Relations Officer for the GPO, where he devised a series of marketing and advertising campaigns that were ground-breaking and bold for their time - and in retrospect have been hailed as brilliant.
Between the wars there was a new fashion in British advertising to use fine artists to bring out the best in graphic design. The expanding publicity department of the Post Office embraced and developed the trend, to improve the quality of its marketing images.
Young artists were commissioned fresh from art schools, many of whom went on to achieve great success in their careers.
As the telephone rose in popularity, the telegram started to decline, until eventually its main use was for communicating bad news. It was great to chat on the telephone - but easier to let someone know of a death in the family through a telegram.
In 1935, to buck the depressing trend and try to return the telegraph system to a more sustainable level of traffic, the Post Office introduced the 'Greetings Telegram' and encouraged the public to share joyful news like a birth or wedding with their loved ones.
The service carried a premium price but was a great success, which reversed the fortunes of the telegram and guaranteed its existence for several decades.
Visit our interactive demonstration and have a go at printing your own telegram
Number Please was an optimistic attempt to create a party game out of telephone numbers.
The game could be played with up to 12 people and involved trying to discover the telephone number of a certain person around the table by a series of questions written on slips of paper. Each paper directed the player to ask a person if they knew what the number was - generally the answer provided on the paper would tell the player to ask someone else until he tracked down someone who knew.
The game was an interesting addition to 20th century entertainments, but it never presented a serious threat to 'Monopoly'. Having said that, some of the names of the players provide a curious social glimpse of the past and some have even made a popular comeback 70 years on: Molly, Rose, Hilda, Madge, Olive, Ena, Gladys, Vera, Irene and Doris.
By the thirties it seemed as if the telephone had entered everyone's consciousness as there was no part of society that hadn't embraced it. So much so that it even became serenaded in this love song.
Long-distance calls were paid for in blocks of three minutes and sometimes if lines were busy this was all the time a caller would be allowed. The song picked up on this theme, which was illustrated by a soldier having an intimate chat with his girlfriend.
The song goes:
Poverty has never been a crime
So I save my pennies all the time
Twice a week on distance telephone
To speak to you alone
Three minutes of heaven and it seems too good to be true
Three minutes of heaven and soon I'll be with you
Three minutes of heaven are when we're together alone
It's three minutes of heaven at some old telephone ......
