The Odessa Telephone Exchange began operation about 1897, with Edna Fielding serving as “central,” or operator. After Miss Fielding’s death in 1902, the Rev. G. B. Ely, a Baptist minister, purchased the exchange. Pioneer rancher A. Quincy Cooper bought the system in 1911 and extended service to rural areas by using barbed wire fences as telephone lines. While checking repairs on a barbed wire line on Jan. 25, 1915, Cooper interrupted the first transcontinental telephone call between Alexander Graham Bell in New York and his assistant in San Francisco. In 1928, the exchange became part of the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.