Musolaphone
(Telecommunications System)
What is Musolaphone?
The Musolaphone (also marketed as the Multa Musola), developed by the Automatic Electric Company of Chicago, Illinois, was an audio distribution system that transmitted news and entertainment over telephone lines to subscribing homes and businesses. The company's "Automatic Enunciator" loudspeakers were employed at the receiving end. A test commercial installation was established in southside Chicago in 1913, but the project was short-lived and did not prove to be financially successful. This was the last significant attempt to set up a "telephone newspaper" to transmit entertainment over telephone lines in the United States, prior to the development of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s.