"Number, please?" The telephone operator at "Central" tends the switchboard in the Sandy Spring home Wayside in the 1890s. Sandy Springers pioneered phone communication, stringing the county's first line in 1878, between Sharon and Brooke Grove. In 1894 the local Enterprise Telephone Company, headed by Dr. Roger Brooke and Alban G. Thomas, initiated service linking some 30 subscribers in Ednor, Ashton, Olney, and Oakdale. It sold out to C&P in 1906.