Introduced to Shanghai in 1882, phone services were ubiquitous in the 1930s. Just like today, phone was used to communicate to other people, but also to order services such a taxi, or grocery to be delivered.
Availability and usage of the telephone greatly increased after the purchase of the Shanghai Telephone Company by American company International Telegraph and Telephone (ITT) in 1930. The company oversaw the phone service in the city. Below is a share for Shanghai telephone. It was listed on the Shanghai stock exchange at the time.
Just like today, the company was issuing monthly bills to customers. Below is a real phone bill from 1937. ITT is mentioned in the logo.
Phones in 1930s Shanghai typically including a rotary dial, Bakelite casings as well as separate handset and base unit. I recently acquired one.
The types of black phones have become one of the symbols of Old Shanghai. They often appear as artefact in movies and TV series. The original one are from the mid 1930’s. They were locally manufactured, inspired by US Western Electric models 102 and 202 from the same period. As many technology items of the time, they continued to be produced nearly unchanged for many years. Many can be found with labels showing they were built well into the 1970s.
This one is definitely of the early ones. The handset and casing were engraved with S.T.C , standing for Shanghai Telephone Company. The later ones were engraved with 上海, Shanghai in Chinese characters. This was probably after WW2 or shortly after 1949. Later on, there was no engraving at all, and the handset design was changed.
This kind of phone became the standard for phones in China, as phone coverage spread in the country after the 1950s. They are now mostly used as decorative items, nice reminder of the Old Shanghai modernity at the time.
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