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 == False claims on a Siemens website == 

 It is sad to see that Siemens places wrong claims about the first commercial phone exchange on their website. 

 The correct date (November 12 1877) was taken from the Book ""Die neuesten Erfindungen unserer Zeit"" (1882) that I own and scanned in, see: http://cdrecord.org/private/tel.html 

 The false claims on the Siemens website (I removed the link) have been written recently by an anonymous person - they are of course unreliable. Note that the Siemens Website claims 1881 for the first the first phone exchange system in Germany, but in late 1880 there have already been 10021 phone exchange places in Germany. So we have a verified number of 10021 phone exchange systems in Germany compared to an unproven claim of 1 on the Siemens website. Note that to the end of 1878 (one year after the first commercial phone exchange system went online in Germany, there have already been 278 phone exchange systems in Germany. 

 So if someone likes to ""correct"" claims, it seems to be a good idea to first read the original citation and to understand it's reliability.   "