In May of the thirty-sixth year of the Meiji Period (1903), the first common-battery switch was introduced in the Kyoto telephone exchange and telephones suiting the switch were introduced. The common-battery system was a system in which all participants used the battery in the switching office jointly, dubbed in Japanese "kyoden shiki" as an abbreviation of "kyodo denchi shiki" (=common battery system). The first common-battery telephone adopted in Kyoto was called gooseneck because the hook and the part of the mouthpiece at the tip of the hook looked like the neck of a goose. At that time, the Russo-Japanese War brought prosperity to Japan prosperity and the number of telephone subscribers increased. Unique inventions for the telephone appeared. Moreover, the telephone was used actively in the Russo-Japanese War.

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