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Show Paro wan Prepares for Dial Service Mafhesons Honored at Telephone Open House The Matheson family, pioneers of telephone service in Parowan, were honored Monday at an open house at the newly constructed dial telephone equipment building build-ing of the Mountain States Tel. and Tel. Co. which will move Into operation Sunday. Jack Dalton, district representative represent-ative of the telephone company indicated that the new dial equipment would be put Into use at 12:01 a. m. Sunday, and at that time residents of Parowan and Paragonah would be provided provid-ed with a new and better service program. The installation of the build, ing equipment and extended lines to offer better service, was set at approximately $.ri0,000 by Dalton. He indicated that the facility would serve 4 10 sub- j scribers and that the type of j service would be substantially! improved. Of the 4 JO subscribers he indi-1 catcd that with the switchover Sunday, 71 percent would be converted con-verted to private lines with the over 29 percent to be provided ! with two-party service. Paragonah, he said, which has been on a rural system with as many as eight parties on a single ' line, will have the greatest lm-provement lm-provement of service. Similar pri-vate pri-vate and two-party service will now be provided in that community, com-munity, he said. New directories for residents of the area are being mailed this week, the district representative stated and the prefix that will be put into use for the Parowan exchange will be 477, it was pointed out. Another improvement provided by the installation will be a new wire reporting system, he pointed out. On hand for the open house were members of the Matheson family who were responsible for the first telephone system in Parowan. Frank A. (Taint) Math-eson, Math-eson, now manager of the Mt. States Tel. and Tel. Co. office at Nophi was in attendance along with his sisters Alice Halterman, Barbara Inglish, Sara Lowder, j Florence Houston and Clara Benson. Ben-son. They related many experiences in connection with the early his-tory his-tory of telephone communications communica-tions in the southern Utah area. (A summary of the report made by Mrs. Halterman appears elsewhere else-where on this page.) The open house was concluded with a tour of the building with company officials explaining the operation and installation technical tech-nical aspects. On hand was Mayor Osmer K. Neilson and other city officials . as well as Revere Robinson, president pre-sident of the Paragonah Town Board. |