ResonantLive Sound Archive

Equipment file · Wired theatre and church relay service

Electrophone theatre relay

Electrophone Company · 1895

Evidence status · documented

Identity and core specifications are documented; some historical fields remain unavailable.

The Electrophone Company began a London service in 1895 that relayed live performances over telephone lines, following the Paris [[theatrophone|Théâtrophone]]. Carbon microphones in theatre footlights fed a manual switchboard, and home subscribers paid £5 a year for headset service; the service ran until 1925.

Introduced
1895
Category
Wired theatre and church relay service
Intended use
Home and hospital listening to live theatre, music hall, opera and church services
Production
Electrophone Company Ltd, Gerrard Street, Soho, London, 1895–1925

Why it mattered

  1. 01

    One of the first commercial services distributing live performances, not recordings, to distant listeners.

  2. 02

    It also gave free listening to hospital patients.

Engineering record

Subscriber access
£5 annual headset subscription via a central switchboard; coin-operated hotel receivers were also installed[1]

Original pricing

No reliable period price located

2026 equivalent

Not calculated without a reliable original price.

Public price evidence was not sufficient to publish a defensible original figure.

Use in the field

Relayed Covent Garden opera and London theatres and music halls to subscribers[1]

Manuals & original documents

No authoritative manual or original document has been located for this profile.

Sources

  1. 1History of The ElectrophoneScience Museum Blog · archive · 2021-12-01
  2. 2The 19th Century iPhoneBBC News · archive · 2010-05-17

Contribute to the record

Know more about Electrophone theatre relay?

Corrections, firsthand information, original documents, and credited photograph sources are welcome.

Your email is private and will not appear in the archive. Contributions are not published automatically.

Back to all equipment Back to Origins of electrical sound

Help build the archive

A missing piece? A correction?

Contribute to Resonant

Support the archive

Resonant is built one verified record at a time: research hours, archival image rights, and the hosting that keeps every era, equipment file, and citation free to read. If this archive is useful to you, a donation of any size keeps the next entry moving.

How donations are used
Venmo@mercer-aplinOpen Venmo, tap the pay field, type the handle, then send any amount.Send any amount · no account needed to viewCash App$MercerAplinOpen Cash App, tap the $cashtag field, type the tag, then send any amount.Send any amount · no account needed to view

Payments go directly to the archive’s editor through Venmo and Cash App. Resonant is an independent project rather than a registered charity, so donations are not tax-deductible and nothing is sold or subscribed to in return.