Melbourne Electrical Supply Company Advertisement C.1910
Melbourne had become a wired city by 1910. Networks of pipes and cables coursed underground, drooped across streets and snaked up buildings. Increasingly the city was seen as a machine, tended by its engineers.
The new systems changed the way the city worked.
Stockbrokers and lawyers could telephone their clients and clerks were elevated to their offices in lifts. The city already had over 1000 by 1907.