As part of its 300th Anniversary year in 1867, Rugby School founded a Natural History Society which would be active until the early 2000s. In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, two years later in 1878 Rugby School Master The Rev. T. N. Hutchinson exhibited a telephone at a meeting of the Natural History Society held on 9th February. The event was reported in the Meteor March 1878.

Exhibitions.
1. The Rev. T. N. Hutchinson (h.) exhib­ited and explained the Telephone. He first performed an experiment to illustrate the principle upon which the action of the in­strument depends. A horizontal cylindrical magnet was supported in a frame, with a coil of insulated wire wound round one end. This wire was connected with a mirror gal­vanometer that threw a bright spot of light on a wall-screen. By simply moving a thin circular disc of iron to and fro in front of the magnet, without actual contact, currents of electricity were called up in the wire alternately in opposite directions, their ex­istence being made manifest by the move­ment of the spot of light on the screen. In the Telephone a similar disc of thin iron is set vibrating by the action of the voice: currents of electricity are then produced, ‘which travel along the wire connecting the two places. At the other end is a similar arrangement—magnet—coil— disc: the currents passing round the coil set the disc at the distant end vibrating in precisely the same way as that in which the disc at the sender’s end had been set in vibration by the voice. Hence similar sounds are pro­duced, since similar waves or pulsations are originated in the air. A large model of the Telephone was ex­hibited, which took to pieces, each separate part being shown and explained. Three pairs of Telephones had been connected by wires with the Laboratory below, and con­versation of a peculiar kind was carried on between the President and other members of the Society upstairs, with various individuals who had adjourned to the Labora­tory for that purpose.