It was a brilliant marketing ploy.
They were known as telephone newspapers.
Broadcasting as we know it, only became possible with the invention of the radio in the mid-19th century.
In between these two technological milestones lie telephone broadcasting.
It was the worlds first live streaming service.
A demonstration of live-streaming was actually made nine years prior during the 1881 Paris Electrical Exhibition.
The theater was located two kilometers away.
Theatrophone started offering its service of opera performances and five-minute news to Parisian in 1890.
A typical days programme began at 9:30 in the morning with news bulletins and newspaper article summaries.
The afternoon schedule comprised of short entertaining stories, sporting intelligence, and filler items of various kinds.
Every hour there news summaries for those who had missed the earlier bulletins.
The evening schedule consisted of theatrical offerings, opera, poetry readings, concerts, lectures and linguistic lessons.
The following schedule for a day’s programme appeared in a 1907 issue ofScientific American.
Parliamentary, provincial, and foreign news.12:00 PM…
Parliamentary and local news.3:00 PM 3:15 PM… Latest exchange reports.3:15 PM 4:00 PM…
There was an editor, his assistants, and the usual flock of reporters for collection of news.
One strong point in its favor is its early reports.
Moreover, invalids and busy people may get as much news as they want with little effort.
The success of Telefon Hirmondo inspired many entrepreneurs to start telephone newspapers in their own cities.
Telefon Hirmondo outlived them all.
The telephone newspaper stopped broadcasting only when its wire data pipe was destroyed by bombing during World War 2.
Tivadar Puskas, the man who created Telefon Hirmondo, never lived to see the success of his invention.
