On Dec. 16 of the twenty-third year of the Meiji Period (1890), telephone service between Tokyo and Yokohama was started. The service used Gower-Bell telephones produced in Japan based on the model imported from England three years earlier. The@Bell telephone receiver, which had been used for some time, was combined with the telephone transmitter invented by F.A.Gower of England in 1879 to become the Gower-Bell telephone.