Empire Rising: Spain

On January 2, 1882, Spain’s first manual telephone exchange was officially established in Madrid and was soon put into use.

Carlo curiously became the first user of Spain’s telephone, engaging in a brief call with Prime Minister Canovas.

The Madrid Royal Palace is located on Byron Street in the city center, while the government buildings are located on Calle de Castilla in the northern part of Madrid City Center, with a direct distance of over eight kilometers between them.

If telegraphs were used for communication, even if the places for sending and receiving telegrams were only a few kilometers apart, it would still take one to two or even three minutes to complete the entire process of sending and receiving telegrams.

But for wired telephones, the communication over such short distances makes the delay almost negligible.

Both Carlo and Prime Minister Canovas’s watches were calibrated, with even the second hand being consistent. It was through the time on their watches that Carlo confirmed the delay for wired telephone over short distances was less than one second.

This kind of delay is quite remarkable, which represents that in a short-distance communication environment, telephones have a broader role and influence than telegraphs.

Of course, for longer distances, the advantages of telegraphs are quite obvious.

Telephones require both parties to be online simultaneously, whereas telegraphs do not. Additionally, telegraphs can be used for secret communications through encrypted codes, which telephones essentially cannot achieve.

Since the telephone communication system in Madrid has just been established, detailed testing of telephone communication in various places is still needed.

After several days of testing, the final data reported to the government by the Madrid Telephone Company also confirmed Carlo’s assumptions.

The current wired telephone technology in short-distance calls, that is, calls within 20 kilometers, does not have too obvious delays.

In this distance range, the call delay is at most only one second, which, compared to telegraphs, is already quite brief.

Because other cities have not yet opened manual telephone exchanges, testing for medium and long-distance telephone delays can only be done through temporarily using telegraph lines.

According to the test results from Madrid Telephone Company, when the call distance exceeds 20 kilometers, the call delay will gradually begin to increase.

When the call distance exceeds 50 kilometers, the call delay will increase to 3-5 seconds, and the call will also become extremely unstable.

As for long-distance calls over hundreds of kilometers, it is very difficult to achieve with current technology. Even if it could be achieved, it would severely impact call quality, and the delay would be difficult to control.

This also leads to the current wired telephone technology being limited to city communication, making it difficult to achieve long-distance communication between cities.

The difficulty in achieving long-distance communication is the biggest disadvantage of the current telephone, and also the issue that wired telephone urgently needs to resolve.

After confirming that the current wired telephone has certain utility, Carlo increased investment in the Madrid Telephone Company and established a wired telephone project research team at the Royal Academy of Sciences, appointing several experts in related fields for further research on wired telephones.

Carlo issued several orders to this research team. First, Spain’s wired telephone must achieve cross-city communication within the next few years.

If cross-city communication can be achieved, whether it is improving the communication efficiency between various levels of government or using it for military purposes, the role of the telephone will greatly increase.

Secondly, seek automatic telephone exchanges that can replace manual methods. If only manual connection can be used for phone calls, this will severely test the efficiency of telephone exchanges.

At this time, there are not many users of wired telephones, and for telephone communication between cities, the manual method can be accepted.

When such convenient technology as the telephone becomes popular, relying solely on manual communication will no longer meet the needs of city telephone communication.

An exploration of an automatic telephone exchange machine must be undertaken, which will not only save manpower but also enable wired telephone technology to develop more quickly.

Carlo’s requirements were not made blindly, but were based on his memory of telephone development.

Both long-distance telephone communication and automatic telephone exchanges are not complicated technologies.

In Carlo’s memory, within the next decade, these two technologies will gradually mature. At this moment, Carlo invests a large amount of funds in research, which is highly likely to advance the time for these technologies to emerge.

As a country mastering these two technologies, Spain can also achieve more far-reaching development in terms of telephones.

Aside from setting his own requirements, Carlo also allocated 2 million Pessetas to the telephone research team and promised to provide at least 1 million Pessetas of research funds annually to ensure the research team’s confidence in dedicating themselves to research.

This research funding is already considerable; the development of the telephone by Bell back then didn’t consume so much funding.

The reason Carlo was willing to invest so much research funding in the telephone research team was to hope they could discover more mature technology regarding telephones more rapidly with sufficient financial support.

Besides funding the research of telephone technology, Carlo also plans to establish a manual telephone exchange in Madrid, allowing both of Spain’s major cities to possess telephone communication technology.

When future wired telephone technology can achieve cross-city communication, Carlo’s first task is to merge the telephone communication systems of Madrid and Barcelona, and connect the telephone communication system to key cities in each large region.

If Madrid and all the cities in mainland Spain can achieve second-level communication, this can also allow government orders to be transmitted at a faster speed to major regions and municipal governments.

At the same time, any unexpected events occurring in the major regions and municipal governments can be learned more quickly by the Cabinet Government, thereby more promptly devising countermeasures and solutions.

The Madrid Telephone Company and the manual telephone exchange have not caught the attention of European countries; after all, such wired telephone technology is not unfamiliar to European countries.

As early as two years ago, in 1880, the UK, France, and Germany had already established telephone bureaus, and laid telephone lines in some of their important cities.

Spain is lagging behind some European countries in this regard, although the main reason for this is Carlo’s higher requirements for Spain’s wired telephone technology.

Although they are both wired telephone technologies, the telephone communication realized by European countries earlier is two years ahead, causing their telephones to be magneto telephones requiring users to supply their own power.

Whether it is battery power or electric wire power, anyway, such a telephone requires a connection to power to be used.

In contrast, Spain’s telephone adopts the latest technology, common-battery telephones do not require users to supply their own power; the telephone line comes with its own power source.

Although there is not much difference between the two kinds of telephones, not requiring users to provide a power source is evidently more convenient for certain restricted usage scenarios.

After all, Europe’s electric power industry is still in its earliest stage of development, and there are not many cities connected to electricity. Even for cities already connected to electricity, there are many areas not covered by electricity.

Even the famously lit-up Madrid’s Nocturnal City, aside from the industrial areas on the outskirts, only has electricity in some bustling streets in the city center.

Most citizens’ homes are not connected to electricity, and lacking a power source naturally means magneto telephones cannot be used.

The greatest function of common-battery telephone is eliminating the limitation of power; besides that, there is not much improvement in terms of call quality and distance.

After telephone communication was established in important government departments, judging from the reports submitted after usage by various departments over a period of time, these departments are quite welcoming of such wired telephones.

With wired telephones, communication between government departments has become more convenient. As the ruler of the country, Carlo can also more quickly contact the Cabinet Government or important departments of the Cabinet, and Prime Minister Canovas can contact all Cabinet Ministers, greatly shortening the time required for communication.

In some cases, officials can discuss issues that originally required face-to-face meetings using only telephone communication.

This is something telegraphs cannot achieve, as telegraphs need to be encoded, and the content in telegraphs will also be seen by more people.