Ways in which the people running the networks talked to the people using them changed radically during the late 19th century.
The transfer of the telegraph and the telephone systems to state control (between the years 1870 and 1912) led to a change in the whole tone and language of communications aimed at users and subscribers. In fact, most of the time, it wasn't really marketing at all.
The Post Office takeover of the infant telephone network was greeted with relief at the time.
Many felt the private companies had made an unimpressive job of providing high quality and good value phone services and most Britons were not sorry to see the service taken...
By the 1930s, Britain had built itself a fully switched, long distance, national telephone network. The trunk was the core of long distance lines linking the major cities of Britain. The branches were the feeder lines that came off the network to supply individual exchanges.
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