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The Struggle for the Telephone
- Memoirs of a Bitter Man


By Birgitte Wistoft

New Technology is often a road to new possibilities of earnings, but the road can be long and the expenses high. That is the way it is today. And that is the way it was a hundred years ago.


The book "Kampen om telefonen" [The Struggle for the Telephone] deals with the first twenty years of Denmark’s oldest and largest private telephone company, today called TDC A/S. Back then its name was Kjøbenhavns Telefon Aktieselskab, KTAS.

The years are 1882-1902. The narrator is co-founder and chairman of the board, titular Councellor of State, Jean Hansen who tells a story of ambitions, dreams, and disappointments; about the tough fight inside and outside the boardroom. It is the story of a loser as Jean Hansen lost his position in KTAS when the founder of the company, business tycoon C.F. Tietgen died in 1901.

Jean Hansen’s narrative is not only a very personal description of life in the corridors of power of the time. It is also an important source to the history of the struggle to obtain power over telephony as it took place in the 1880’s and 1890’s between the state, the municipalities, and the private companies resulting in the Act of 11th may 1897 that enabled the state almost 100 years later to nationalize and immediately afterwards privatize Danish telephony.

The book reproduces Jean Hansen’s narrative in its entirety for the first time with comments and illustrations that include a number of not previously published photos from the infancy of the telephone.


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