Did they really have individual telephone wires going from a central tower to each customer in Sweden in the late 1800s?

Upvote:10

Absolutely - and dedicated point-to-point wiring remained state-of-the-art technology for telephony right into the 1960's, as in the 1960 photograph below of a telephone exchange switchboard:

As the number of subscribers increased, however, these exchanges became more numerous and more disbursed through the cities, though the dedicated lines from each subscriber or party-line to an exchange remained. Over time these dedicated lines were gradually buried underground over time, but remained above ground in many other places. However the demand for telephony had expanded far more rapidly at first than it was possible to bury the liens, so for many years most neighbourhoods were served by above ground lines.

Every subscriber (or group of subscribers in the case of party lines) had a dedicated line into the nearest telephone exchange. To make a call one asked the switchboard operator to manually connect your dedicated line to the exchange of the party you desired to call, which in turn often required multiple exchange relays by other operators until a dedicated connection had been established from your dedicated line to your receiver's dedicated line. Although the process is now automated, this remains the reason that wired telephony remains a point-to-point service.