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@@ -0,0 +1,5560 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The History of the Telephone, by Herbert N. Casson + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The History of the Telephone + +Author: Herbert N. Casson + +Posting Date: August 5, 2008 [EBook #819] +Release Date: February, 1997 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Keller + + + + + +THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE + +By Herbert N. Casson + + + + +PREFACE + + +Thirty-five short years, and presto! the newborn art of telephony is +fullgrown. Three million telephones are now scattered abroad in foreign +countries, and seven millions are massed here, in the land of its birth. + +So entirely has the telephone outgrown the ridicule with which, as many +people can well remember, it was first received, that it is now in +most places taken for granted, as though it were a part of the natural +phenomena of this planet. It has so marvellously extended the +facilities of conversation--that "art in which a man has all mankind for +competitors"--that it is now an indispensable help to whoever would +live the convenient life. The disadvantage of being deaf and dumb to +all absent persons, which was universal in pre-telephonic days, has now +happily been overcome; and I hope that this story of how and by whom it +was done will be a welcome addition to American libraries. + +It is such a story as the telephone itself might tell, if it could speak +with a voice of its own. It is not technical. It is not statistical. It +is not exhaustive. It is so brief, in fact, that a second volume could +readily be made by describing the careers of telephone leaders whose +names I find have been omitted unintentionally from this book--such +indispensable men, for instance, as William R. Driver, who has signed +more telephone cheques and larger ones than any other man; Geo. S. +Hibbard, Henry W. Pope, and W. D. Sargent, three veterans who know +telephony in all its phases; George Y. Wallace, the last survivor of the +Rocky Mountain pioneers; Jasper N. Keller, of Texas and New England; +W. T. Gentry, the central figure of the Southeast, and the following +presidents of telephone companies: Bernard E. Sunny, of Chicago; E. B. +Field, of Denver; D. Leet Wilson, of Pittsburg; L. G. Richardson, of +Indianapolis; Caspar E. Yost, of Omaha; James E. Caldwell, of Nashville; +Thomas Sherwin, of Boston; Henry T. Scott, of San Francisco; H. J. +Pettengill, of Dallas; Alonzo Burt, of Milwaukee; John Kilgour, of +Cincinnati; and Chas. S. Gleed, of Kansas City. + +I am deeply indebted to most of these men for the information which +is herewith presented; and also to such pioneers, now dead, as O. E. +Madden, the first General Agent; Frank L. Pope, the noted electrical +expert; C. H. Haskins, of Milwaukee; George F. Ladd, of San Francisco; +and Geo. F. Durant, of St. Louis. + +H. N. C. PINE HILL, N. Y., June 1, 1910. + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + + I THE BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE + + II THE BUILDING OF THE BUSINESS + + III THE HOLDING OF THE BUSINESS + + IV THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART + + V THE EXPANSION OF THE BUSINESS + + VI NOTABLE USERS OF THE TELEPHONE + + VII THE TELEPHONE AND NATIONAL EFFICIENCY + + VIII THE TELEPHONE IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES + + IX THE FUTURE OF THE TELEPHONE + + + + +THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE + + + +CHAPTER I. THE BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE + +In that somewhat distant year 1875, when the telegraph and the Atlantic +cable were the most wonderful things in the world, a tall young +professor of elocution was desperately busy in a noisy machine-shop +that stood in one of the narrow streets of Boston, not far from Scollay +Square. It was a very hot afternoon in June, but the young professor had +forgotten the heat and the grime of the workshop. He was wholly absorbed +in the making of a nondescript machine, a sort of crude harmonica with +a clock-spring reed, a magnet, and a wire. It was a most absurd toy in +appearance. It was unlike any other thing that had ever been made in any +country. The young professor had been toiling over it for three years +and it had constantly baffled him, until, on this hot afternoon in June, +1875, he heard an almost inaudible sound--a faint TWANG--come from the +machine itself. + +For an instant he was stunned. He had been expecting just such a sound +for several months, but it came so suddenly as to give him the sensation +of surprise. His eyes blazed with delight, and he sprang in a passion of +eagerness to an adjoining room in which stood a young mechanic who was +assisting him. + +"Snap that reed again, Watson," cried the apparently irrational young +professor. There was one of the odd-looking machines in each room, so +it appears, and the two were connected by an electric wire. Watson had +snapped the reed on one of the machines and the professor had heard from +the other machine exactly the same sound. It was no more than the gentle +TWANG of a clock-spring; but it was the first time in the history of the +world that a complete sound had been carried along a wire, reproduced +perfectly at the other end, and heard by an expert in acoustics. + +That twang of the clock-spring was the first tiny cry of the newborn +telephone, uttered in the clanging din of a machine-shop and happily +heard by a man whose ear had been trained to recognize the strange voice +of the little newcomer. There, amidst flying belts and jarring wheels, +the baby telephone was born, as feeble and helpless as any other baby, +and "with no language but a cry." + +The professor-inventor, who had thus rescued the tiny foundling of +science, was a young Scottish American. His name, now known as widely +as the telephone itself, was Alexander Graham Bell. He was a teacher +of acoustics and a student of electricity, possibly the only man in his +generation who was able to focus a knowledge of both subjects upon the +problem of the telephone. To other men that exceedingly faint sound +would have been as inaudible as silence itself; but to Bell it was a +thunder-clap. It was a dream come true. It was an impossible thing which +had in a flash become so easy that he could scarcely believe it. Here, +without the use of a battery, with no more electric current than that +made by a couple of magnets, all the waves of a sound had been carried +along a wire and changed back to sound at the farther end. It was +absurd. It was incredible. It was something which neither wire nor +electricity had been known to do before. But it was true. + +No discovery has ever been less accidental. It was the last link of +a long chain of discoveries. It was the result of a persistent and +deliberate search. Already, for half a year or longer, Bell had known +the correct theory of the telephone; but he had not realized that the +feeble undulatory current generated by a magnet was strong enough +for the transmission of speech. He had been taught to undervalue the +incredible efficiency of electricity. + +Not only was Bell himself a teacher of the laws of speech, so highly +skilled that he was an instructor in Boston University. His father, +also, his two brothers, his uncle, and his grandfather had taught the +laws of speech in the universities of Edinburgh, Dublin, and London. +For three generations the Bells had been professors of the science +of talking. They had even helped to create that science by several +inven-tions. The first of them, Alexander Bell, had invented a system +for the correction of stammering and similar defects of speech. The +second, Alexander Melville Bell, was the dean of British elocutionists, +a man of creative brain and a most impressive facility of rhetoric. He +was the author of a dozen text-books on the art of speaking correctly, +and also of a most ingenious sign-language which he called "Visible +Speech." Every letter in the alphabet of this language represented a +certain action of the lips and tongue; so that a new method was provided +for those who wished to learn foreign languages or to speak their own +language more correctly. And the third of these speech-improving Bells, +the inventor of the telephone, inherited the peculiar genius of his +fathers, both inventive and rhetorical, to such a degree that as a boy +he had constructed an artificial skull, from gutta-percha and India +rubber, which, when enlivened by a blast of air from a hand-bellows, +would actually pronounce several words in an almost human manner. + +The third Bell, the only one of this remarkable family who concerns us +at this time, was a young man, barely twenty-eight, at the time when his +ear caught the first cry of the telephone. But he was already a man of +some note on his own account. He had been educated in Edinburgh, the +city of his birth, and in London; and had in one way and another picked +up a smattering of anatomy, music, electricity, and telegraphy. Until he +was sixteen years of age, he had read nothing but novels and poetry and +romantic tales of Scottish heroes. Then he left home to become a teacher +of elocution in various British schools, and by the time he was of age +he had made several slight discoveries as to the nature of vowel-sounds. +Shortly afterwards, he met in London two distinguished men, Alexander J. +Ellis and Sir Charles Wheatstone, who did far more than they ever knew +to forward Bell in the direction of the telephone. + +Ellis was the president of the London Philological Society. Also, he was +the translator of the famous book on "The Sensations of Tone," written +by Helmholtz, who, in the period from 1871 to 1894 made Berlin the +world-centre for the study of the physical sciences. So it happened that +when Bell ran to Ellis as a young enthusiast and told his experiments, +Ellis informed him that Helmholtz had done the same things several years +before and done them more completely. He brought Bell to his house and +showed him what Helmholtz had done--how he had kept tuning-forks in +vibration by the power of electro-magnets, and blended the tones of +several tuning-forks together to produce the complex quality of the +human voice. + +Now, Helmholtz had not been trying to invent a telephone, nor any sort +of message-carrier. His aim was to point out the physical basis of +music, and nothing more. But this fact that an electro-magnet would set +a tuning-fork humming was new to Bell and very attractive. It appealed +at once to him as a student of speech. If a tuning-fork could be made to +sing by a magnet or an electrified wire, why would it not be possible +to make a musical telegraph--a telegraph with a piano key-board, so that +many messages could be sent at once over a single wire? Unknown to Bell, +there were several dozen inven-tors then at work upon this problem, +which proved in the end to be very elusive. But it gave him at least a +starting-point, and he forthwith commenced his quest of the telephone. + +As he was then in England, his first step was naturally to visit Sir +Charles Wheatstone, the best known English expert on telegraphy. Sir +Charles had earned his title by many inventions. He was a simple-natured +scientist, and treated Bell with the utmost kindness. He showed him an +ingenious talking-machine that had been made by Baron de Kempelin. At +this time Bell was twenty-two and unknown; Wheatstone was sixty-seven +and famous. And the personality of the veteran scientist made so vivid +a picture upon the mind of the impressionable young Bell that the grand +passion of science became henceforth the master-motif of his life. + +From this summit of glorious ambition he was thrown, several months +later, into the depths of grief and despondency. The White Plague had +come to the home in Edinburgh and taken away his two brothers. More, it +had put its mark upon the young inventor himself. Nothing but a change +of climate, said his doctor, would put him out of danger. And so, to +save his life, he and his father and mother set sail from Glasgow and +came to the small Canadian town of Brantford, where for a year he fought +down his tendency to consumption, and satisfied his nervous energy by +teaching "Visible Speech" to a tribe of Mohawk Indians. + +By this time it had become evident, both to his parents and to his +friends, that young Graham was destined to become some sort of a +creative genius. He was tall and supple, with a pale complexion, large +nose, full lips, jet-black eyes, and jet-black hair, brushed high +and usually rumpled into a curly tangle. In temperament he was a true +scientific Bohemian, with the ideals of a savant and the disposition +of an artist. He was wholly a man of enthusiasms, more devoted to ideas +than to people; and less likely to master his own thoughts than to be +mastered by them. He had no shrewdness, in any commercial sense, and +very little knowledge of the small practical details of ordinary living. +He was always intense, always absorbed. When he applied his mind to a +problem, it became at once an enthralling arena, in which there went +whirling a chariot-race of ideas and inventive fancies. + +He had been fascinated from boyhood by his father's system of "Visible +Speech." He knew it so well that he once astonished a professor of +Oriental languages by repeating correctly a sentence of Sanscrit that +had been written in "Visible Speech" characters. While he was living in +London his most absorbing enthusiasm was the instruction of a class of +deaf-mutes, who could be trained to talk, he believed, by means of the +"Visible Speech" alphabet. He was so deeply impressed by the progress +made by these pupils, and by the pathos of their dumbness, that when he +arrived in Canada he was in doubt as to which of these two tasks was the +more important--the teaching of deaf-mutes or the invention of a musical +telegraph. + +At this point, and before Bell had begun to experiment with his +telegraph, the scene of the story shifts from Canada to Massachusetts. +It appears that his father, while lecturing in Boston, had mentioned +Graham's exploits with a class of deaf-mutes; and soon afterward the +Boston Board of Education wrote to Graham, offering him five hundred +dollars if he would come to Boston and introduce his system of teaching +in a school for deaf-mutes that had been opened recently. The young man +joyfully agreed, and on the first of April, 1871, crossed the line and +became for the remainder of his life an American. + +For the next two years his telegraphic work was laid aside, if not +forgotten. His success as a teacher of deaf-mutes was sudden and +overwhelming. It was the educational sensation of 1871. It won him a +professorship in Boston University; and brought so many pupils around +him that he ventured to open an ambitious "School of Vocal Physiology," +which became at once a profitable enterprise. For a time there seemed +to be little hope of his escaping from the burden of this success and +becoming an inventor, when, by a most happy coincidence, two of his +pupils brought to him exactly the sort of stimulation and practical help +that he needed and had not up to this time received. + +One of these pupils was a little deaf-mute tot, five years of age, named +Georgie Sanders. Bell had agreed to give him a series of private lessons +for $350 a year; and as the child lived with his grandmother in the city +of Salem, sixteen miles from Boston, it was agreed that Bell should make +his home with the Sanders family. Here he not only found the keenest +interest and sympathy in his air-castles of invention, but also was +given permission to use the cellar of the house as his workshop. + +For the next three years this cellar was his favorite retreat. He +littered it with tuning-forks, magnets, batteries, coils of wire, tin +trumpets, and cigar-boxes. No one outside of the Sanders family was +allowed to enter it, as Bell was nervously afraid of having his ideas +stolen. He would even go to five or six stores to buy his supplies, for +fear that his intentions should be discovered. Almost with the secrecy +of a conspirator, he worked alone in this cellar, usually at night, and +quite oblivious of the fact that sleep was a necessity to him and to the +Sanders family. + +"Often in the middle of the night Bell would wake me up," said Thomas +Sanders, the father of Georgie. "His black eyes would be blazing with +excitement. Leaving me to go down to the cellar, he would rush wildly to +the barn and begin to send me signals along his experimental wires. If I +noticed any improvement in his machine, he would be delighted. He would +leap and whirl around in one of his `war-dances' and then go contentedly +to bed. But if the experiment was a failure, he would go back to his +workbench and try some different plan." + +The second pupil who became a factor--a very considerable factor--in +Bell's career was a fifteen-year-old girl named Mabel Hubbard, who had +lost her hearing, and consequently her speech, through an attack of +scarlet-fever when a baby. She was a gentle and lovable girl, and Bell, +in his ardent and headlong way, lost his heart to her completely; and +four years later, he had the happiness of making her his wife. Mabel +Hubbard did much to encourage Bell. She followed each step of his +progress with the keenest interest. She wrote his letters and copied his +patents. She cheered him on when he felt himself beaten. And through her +sympathy with Bell and his ambitions, she led her father--a widely +known Boston lawyer named Gardiner G. Hubbard--to become Bell's chief +spokesman and defender, a true apostle of the telephone. + +Hubbard first became aware of Bell's inventive efforts one evening when +Bell was visiting at his home in Cambridge. Bell was illustrating some +of the mysteries of acoustics by the aid of a piano. "Do you know," he +said to Hubbard, "that if I sing the note G close to the strings of +the piano, that the G-string will answer me?" "Well, what then?" asked +Hubbard. "It is a fact of tremendous importance," replied Bell. "It is +an evidence that we may some day have a musical telegraph, which will +send as many messages simultaneously over one wire as there are notes on +that piano." + +Later, Bell ventured to confide to Hubbard his wild dream of sending +speech over an electric wire, but Hubbard laughed him to scorn. "Now you +are talking nonsense," he said. "Such a thing never could be more than +a scientific toy. You had better throw that idea out of your mind and go +ahead with your musical telegraph, which if it is successful will make +you a millionaire." + +But the longer Bell toiled at his musical telegraph, the more he dreamed +of replacing the telegraph and its cumbrous sign-language by a new +machine that would carry, not dots and dashes, but the human voice. +"If I can make a deaf-mute talk," he said, "I can make iron talk." For +months he wavered between the two ideas. He had no more than the most +hazy conception of what this voice-carrying machine would be like. +At first he conceived of having a harp at one end of the wire, and a +speaking-trumpet at the other, so that the tones of the voice would be +reproduced by the strings of the harp. + +Then, in the early Summer of 1874, while he was puzzling over this harp +apparatus, the dim outline of a new path suddenly glinted in front of +him. He had not been forgetful of "Visible Speech" all this while, +but had been making experiments with two remarkable machines--the +phonautograph and the manometric capsule, by means of which the +vibrations of sound were made plainly visible. If these could be +im-proved, he thought, then the deaf might be taught to speak by +SIGHT--by learning an alphabet of vibrations. He mentioned these +experiments to a Boston friend, Dr. Clarence J. Blake, and he, being a +surgeon and an aurist, naturally said, "Why don't you use a REAL EAR?" + +Such an idea never had, and probably never could have, occurred to Bell; +but he accepted it with eagerness. Dr. Blake cut an ear from a dead +man's head, together with the ear-drum and the associated bones. Bell +took this fragment of a skull and arranged it so that a straw touched +the ear-drum at one end and a piece of moving smoked glass at the other. +Thus, when Bell spoke loudly into the ear, the vibrations of the drum +made tiny markings upon the glass. + +It was one of the most extraordinary incidents in the whole history of +the telephone. To an uninitiated onlooker, nothing could have been more +ghastly or absurd. How could any one have interpreted the gruesome joy +of this young professor with the pale face and the black eyes, who stood +earnestly singing, whispering, and shouting into a dead man's ear? What +sort of a wizard must he be, or ghoul, or madman? And in Salem, too, the +home of the witchcraft superstition! Certainly it would not have gone +well with Bell had he lived two centuries earlier and been caught at +such black magic. + +What had this dead man's ear to do with the invention of the telephone? +Much. Bell noticed how small and thin was the ear-drum, and yet how +effectively it could send thrills and vibrations through heavy bones. +"If this tiny disc can vibrate a bone," he thought, "then an iron disc +might vibrate an iron rod, or at least, an iron wire." In a flash the +conception of a membrane telephone was pictured in his mind. He saw in +imagination two iron discs, or ear-drums, far apart and connected by +an electrified wire, catching the vibrations of sound at one end, and +reproducing them at the other. At last he was on the right path, and had +a theoretical knowledge of what a speaking telephone ought to be. What +remained to be done was to construct such a machine and find out how the +electric current could best be brought into harness. + +Then, as though Fortune suddenly felt that he was winning this +stupendous success too easily, Bell was flung back by an avalanche +of troubles. Sanders and Hubbard, who had been paying the cost of his +experiments, abruptly announced that they would pay no more unless he +confined his attention to the musical telegraph, and stopped wasting his +time on ear-toys that never could be of any financial value. What +these two men asked could scarcely be denied, as one of them was his +best-paying patron and the other was the father of the girl whom he +hoped to marry. "If you wish my daughter," said Hubbard, "you must +abandon your foolish telephone." Bell's "School of Vocal Physiology," +too, from which he had hoped so much, had come to an inglorious end. +He had been too much absorbed in his experiments to sustain it. His +professorship had been given up, and he had no pupils except Georgie +Sanders and Mabel Hubbard. He was poor, much poorer than his associates +knew. And his mind was torn and distracted by the contrary calls of +science, poverty, business, and affection. Pouring out his sorrows in a +letter to his mother, he said: "I am now beginning to realize the cares +and anxieties of being an inventor. I have had to put off all pupils and +classes, for flesh and blood could not stand much longer such a strain +as I have had upon me." + +While stumbling through this Slough of Despond, he was called to +Washington by his patent lawyer. Not having enough money to pay the cost +of such a journey, he borrowed the price of a return ticket from Sanders +and arranged to stay with a friend in Washington, to save a hotel bill +that he could not afford. At that time Professor Joseph Henry, who knew +more of the theory of electrical science than any other American, +was the Grand Old Man of Washington; and poor Bell, in his doubt and +desperation, resolved to run to him for advice. + +Then came a meeting which deserves to be historic. For an entire +afternoon the two men worked together over the apparatus that Bell had +brought from Boston, just as Henry had worked over the telegraph before +Bell was born. Henry was now a veteran of seventy-eight, with only +three years remaining to his credit in the bank of Time, while Bell was +twenty-eight. There was a long half-century between them; but the youth +had discovered a New Fact that the sage, in all his wisdom, had never +known. + +"You are in possession of the germ of a great invention," said Henry, +"and I would advise you to work at it until you have made it complete." + +"But," replied Bell, "I have not got the electrical knowledge that is +necessary." + +"Get it," responded the aged scientist. + +"I cannot tell you how much these two words have encouraged me," said +Bell afterwards, in describing this interview to his parents. "I live +too much in an atmosphere of discouragement for scientific pursuits; and +such a chimerical idea as telegraphing VOCAL SOUNDS would indeed seem to +most minds scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over." + +By this time Bell had moved his workshop from the cellar in Salem to 109 +Court Street, Boston, where he had rented a room from Charles Williams, +a manufacturer of electrical supplies. Thomas A. Watson was his +assistant, and both Bell and Watson lived nearby, in two cheap little +bedrooms. The rent of the workshop and bedrooms, and Watson's wages +of nine dollars a week, were being paid by Sanders and Hubbard. +Consequently, when Bell returned from Washington, he was compelled +by his agreement to devote himself mainly to the musical telegraph, +although his heart was now with the telephone. For exactly three months +after his interview with Professor Henry, he continued to plod ahead, +along both lines, until, on that memorable hot afternoon in June, 1875, +the full TWANG of the clock-spring came over the wire, and the telephone +was born. + +From this moment, Bell was a man of one purpose. He won over Sanders and +Hubbard. He converted Watson into an enthusiast. He forgot his musical +telegraph, his "Visible Speech," his classes, his poverty. He threw +aside a profession in which he was already locally famous. And he +grappled with this new mystery of electricity, as Henry had advised +him to do, encouraging himself with the fact that Morse, who was only +a painter, had mastered his electrical difficulties, and there was no +reason why a professor of acoustics should not do as much. + +The telephone was now in existence, but it was the youngest and feeblest +thing in the nation. It had not yet spoken a word. It had to be taught, +developed, and made fit for the service of the irritable business world. +All manner of discs had to be tried, some smaller and thinner than +a dime and others of steel boiler-plate as heavy as the shield of +Achilles. In all the books of electrical science, there was nothing to +help Bell and Watson in this journey they were making through an unknown +country. They were as chartless as Columbus was in 1492. Neither they +nor any one else had acquired any experience in the rearing of a young +telephone. No one knew what to do next. There was nothing to know. + +For forty weeks--long exasperating weeks--the telephone could do no more +than gasp and make strange inarticulate noises. Its educators had not +learned how to manage it. Then, on March 10, 1876, IT TALKED. It said +distinctly-- + +"MR. WATSON, COME HERE, I WANT YOU." Watson, who was at the lower end of +the wire, in the basement, dropped the receiver and rushed with wild joy +up three flights of stairs to tell the glad tidings to Bell. "I can hear +you!" he shouted breathlessly. "I can hear the WORDS." + +It was not easy, of course, for the weak young telephone to make itself +heard in that noisy workshop. No one, not even Bell and Watson, was +familiar with its odd little voice. Usually Watson, who had a +remarkably keen sense of hearing, did the listening; and Bell, who was +a professional elocutionist, did the talking. And day by day the tone +of the baby instrument grew clearer--a new note in the orchestra of +civilization. + +On his twenty-ninth birthday, Bell received his patent, No. +174,465--"the most valuable single patent ever issued" in any country. +He had created something so entirely new that there was no name for it +in any of the world's languages. In describing it to the officials +of the Patent Office, he was obliged to call it "an improvement in +telegraphy," when, in truth, it was nothing of the kind. It was as +different from the telegraph as the eloquence of a great orator is from +the sign-language of a deaf-mute. + +Other inventors had worked from the standpoint of the telegraph; and +they never did, and never could, get any better results than signs and +symbols. But Bell worked from the standpoint of the human voice. He +cross-fertilized the two sciences of acoustics and electricity. His +study of "Visible Speech" had trained his mind so that he could mentally +SEE the shape of a word as he spoke it. He knew what a spoken word was, +and how it acted upon the air, or the ether, that carried its vibrations +from the lips to the ear. He was a third-generation specialist in the +nature of speech, and he knew that for the transmission of spoken words +there must be "a pulsatory action of the electric current which is the +exact equivalent of the aerial impulses." + +Bell knew just enough about electricity, and not too much. He did +not know the possible from the impossible. "Had I known more about +electricity, and less about sound," he said, "I would never have +invented the telephone." What he had done was so amazing, so foolhardy, +that no trained electrician could have thought of it. It was "the +very hardihood of invention," and yet it was not in any sense a chance +discovery. It was the natural output of a mind that had been led to +assemble just the right materials for such a product. + +As though the very stars in their courses were working for this young +wizard with the talking wire, the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia +opened its doors exactly two months after the telephone had learned to +talk. Here was a superb opportunity to let the wide world know what +had been done, and fortunately Hubbard was one of the Centennial +Commissioners. By his influence a small table was placed in the +Department of Education, in a narrow space between a stairway and a +wall, and on this table was deposited the first of the telephones. + +Bell had no intention of going to the Centennial himself. He was too +poor. Sanders and Hubbard had never done more than pay his room-rent and +the expense of his experiments. For his three or four years of inventing +he had received nothing as yet--nothing but his patent. In order +to live, he had been compelled to reorganize his classes in "Visible +Speech," and to pick up the ravelled ends of his neglected profession. + +But one Friday afternoon, toward the end of June, his sweetheart, Mabel +Hubbard, was taking the train for the Centennial; and he went to the +depot to say good-bye. Here Miss Hubbard learned for the first time that +Bell was not to go. She coaxed and pleaded, without effect. Then, as the +train was starting, leaving Bell on the platform, the affectionate young +girl could no longer control her feelings and was overcome by a passion +of tears. At this the susceptible Bell, like a true Sir Galahad, dashed +after the moving train and sprang aboard, without ticket or baggage, +oblivious of his classes and his poverty and of all else except this one +maiden's distress. "I never saw a man," said Watson, "so much in love as +Bell was." + +As it happened, this impromptu trip to the Centennial proved to be one +of the most timely acts of his life. On the following Sunday after-noon +the judges were to make a special tour of inspection, and Mr. Hubbard, +after much trouble, had obtained a promise that they would spend a +few minutes examining Bell's telephone. By this time it had been on +exhibition for more than six weeks, without attracting the serious +attention of anybody. + +When Sunday afternoon arrived, Bell was at his little table, nervous, +yet confident. But hour after hour went by, and the judges did not +arrive. The day was intensely hot, and they had many wonders to examine. +There was the first electric light, and the first grain-binder, and the +musical telegraph of Elisha Gray, and the marvellous exhibit of printing +telegraphs shown by the Western Union Company. By the time they came to +Bell's table, through a litter of school-desks and blackboards, the +hour was seven o'clock, and every man in the party was hot, tired, and +hungry. Several announced their intention of returning to their hotels. +One took up a telephone receiver, looked at it blankly, and put it +down again. He did not even place it to his ear. Another judge made a +slighting remark which raised a laugh at Bell's expense. Then a most +marvellous thing happened--such an incident as would make a chapter in +"The Arabian Nights Entertainments." + +Accompanied by his wife, the Empress Theresa, and by a bevy of +courtiers, the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro de Alcantara, walked into +the room, advanced with both hands outstretched to the bewildered Bell, +and exclaimed: "Professor Bell, I am delighted to see you again." The +judges at once forgot the heat and the fatigue and the hunger. Who was +this young inventor, with the pale complexion and black eyes, that he +should be the friend of Emperors? They did not know, and for the moment +even Bell himself had forgotten, that Dom Pedro had once visited Bell's +class of deaf-mutes at Boston University. He was especially interested +in such humanitarian work, and had recently helped to organize the first +Brazilian school for deaf-mutes at Rio de Janeiro. And so, with the +tall, blond-bearded Dom Pedro in the centre, the assembled judges, and +scientists--there were fully fifty in all--entered with unusual zest +into the proceedings of this first telephone exhibition. + +A wire had been strung from one end of the room to the other, and while +Bell went to the transmitter, Dom Pedro took up the receiver and placed +it to his ear. It was a moment of tense expectancy. No one knew clearly +what was about to happen, when the Emperor, with a dramatic gesture, +raised his head from the receiver and exclaimed with a look of utter +amazement: "MY GOD--IT TALKS!" + +Next came to the receiver the oldest scientist in the group, the +venerable Joseph Henry, whose encouragement to Bell had been so timely. +He stopped to listen, and, as one of the bystanders afterwards said, +no one could forget the look of awe that came into his face as he heard +that iron disc talking with a human voice. "This," said he, "comes +nearer to overthrowing the doctrine of the conservation of energy than +anything I ever saw." + +Then came Sir William Thomson, latterly known as Lord Kelvin. It was +fitting that he should be there, for he was the foremost electrical +scientist at that time in the world, and had been the engineer of the +first Atlantic Cable. He listened and learned what even he had not known +before, that a solid metallic body could take up from the air all the +countless varieties of vibrations produced by speech, and that these +vibrations could be carried along a wire and reproduced exactly by a +second metallic body. He nodded his head solemnly as he rose from +the receiver. "It DOES speak," he said emphatically. "It is the most +wonderful thing I have seen in America." + +So, one after another, this notable company of men listened to the voice +of the first telephone, and the more they knew of science, the less they +were inclined to believe their ears. The wiser they were, the more they +wondered. To Henry and Thomson, the masters of electrical magic, this +instrument was as surprising as it was to the man in the street. And +both were noble enough to admit frankly their astonishment in the +reports which they made as judges, when they gave Bell a Certificate +of Award. "Mr. Bell has achieved a result of transcendent scientific +interest," wrote Sir William Thomson. "I heard it speak distinctly +several sentences.... I was astonished and delighted.... It is the +greatest marvel hitherto achieved by the electric telegraph." + +Until nearly ten o'clock that night the judges talked and listened by +turns at the telephone. Then, next morning, they brought the apparatus +to the judges' pavilion, where for the remainder of the summer it was +mobbed by judges and scientists. Sir William Thomson and his wife ran +back and forth between the two ends of the wire like a pair of delighted +children. And thus it happened that the crude little instrument that +had been tossed into an out-of-the-way corner became the star of +the Centennial. It had been given no more than eighteen words in the +official catalogue, and here it was acclaimed as the wonder of wonders. +It had been conceived in a cellar and born in a machine-shop; and now, +of all the gifts that our young American Republic had received on its +one-hundredth birthday, the telephone was honored as the rarest and most +welcome of them all. + + + +CHAPTER II. THE BUILDING OF THE BUSINESS + +After the telephone had been born in Boston, baptized in the Patent +Office, and given a royal reception at the Philadelphia Centennial, it +might be supposed that its life thenceforth would be one of peace and +pleasantness. But as this is history, and not fancy, there must be +set down the very surprising fact that the young newcomer received no +welcome and no notice from the great business world. "It is a scientific +toy," said the men of trade and commerce. "It is an interesting +instrument, of course, for professors of electricity and acoustics; but +it can never be a practical necessity. As well might you propose to put +a telescope into a steel-mill or to hitch a balloon to a shoe-factory." + +Poor Bell, instead of being applauded, was pelted with a hailstorm of +ridicule. He was an "impostor," a "ventriloquist," a "crank who says +he can talk through a wire." The London Times alluded pompously to the +telephone as the latest American humbug, and gave many profound reasons +why speech could not be sent over a wire, because of the intermittent +nature of the electric current. Almost all electricians--the men who +were supposed to know--pronounced the telephone an impossible thing; and +those who did not openly declare it to be a hoax, believed that Bell had +stumbled upon some freakish use of electricity, which could never be of +any practical value. + +Even though he came late in the succession of inventors, Bell had to run +the gantlet of scoffing and adversity. By the reception that the public +gave to his telephone, he learned to sympathize with Howe, whose first +sewing-machine was smashed by a Boston mob; with McCormick, whose first +reaper was called "a cross between an Astley chariot, a wheelbarrow, +and a flying-machine"; with Morse, whom ten Congresses regarded as a +nuisance; with Cyrus Field, whose Atlantic Cable was denounced as "a mad +freak of stubborn ignorance"; and with Westinghouse, who was called a +fool for proposing "to stop a railroad train with wind." + +The very idea of talking at a piece of sheet-iron was so new and +extraordinary that the normal mind repulsed it. Alike to the laborer +and the scientist, it was incomprehensible. It was too freakish, too +bizarre, to be used outside of the laboratory and the museum. No one, +literally, could understand how it worked; and the only man who offered +a clear solution of the mystery was a Boston mechanic, who maintained +that there was "a hole through the middle of the wire." + +People who talked for the first time into a telephone box had a sort of +stage fright. They felt foolish. To do so seemed an absurd performance, +especially when they had to shout at the top of their voices. Plainly, +whatever of convenience there might be in this new contrivance was +far outweighed by the loss of personal dignity; and very few men +had sufficient imagination to picture the telephone as a part of the +machinery of their daily work. The banker said it might do well enough +for grocers, but that it would never be of any value to banking; and the +grocer said it might do well enough for bankers, but that it would never +be of any value to grocers. + +As Bell had worked out his invention in Salem, one editor displayed the +headline, "Salem Witchcraft." The New York Herald said: "The effect is +weird and almost supernatural." The Providence Press said: "It is hard +to resist the notion that the powers of darkness are somehow in league +with it." And The Boston Times said, in an editorial of bantering +ridicule: "A fellow can now court his girl in China as well as in East +Boston; but the most serious aspect of this invention is the awful and +irresponsible power it will give to the average mother-in-law, who will +be able to send her voice around the habitable globe." + +There were hundreds of shrewd capitalists in American cities in 1876, +looking with sharp eyes in all directions for business chances; but not +one of them came to Bell with an offer to buy his patent. Not one came +running for a State contract. And neither did any legislature, or city +council, come forward to the task of giving the people a cheap and +efficient telephone service. As for Bell himself, he was not a man of +affairs. In all practical business matters, he was as incompetent as a +Byron or a Shelley. He had done his part, and it now remained for men +of different abilities to take up his telephone and adapt it to the uses +and conditions of the business world. + +The first man to undertake this work was Gardiner G. Hubbard, who +became soon afterwards the father-in-law of Bell. He, too, was a man +of enthusiasm rather than of efficiency. He was not a man of wealth +or business experience, but he was admirably suited to introduce the +telephone to a hostile public. His father had been a judge of the +Massachusetts Supreme Court; and he himself was a lawyer whose practice +had been mainly in matters of legislation. He was, in 1876, a man of +venerable appearance, with white hair, worn long, and a patriarchal +beard. He was a familiar figure in Washington, and well known among the +public men of his day. A versatile and entertaining companion, by turns +prosperous and impecunious, and an optimist always, Gardiner Hubbard +became a really indispensable factor as the first advance agent of the +telephone business. + +No other citizen had done more for the city of Cambridge than Hubbard. +It was he who secured gas for Cambridge in 1853, and pure water, and a +street-railway to Boston. He had gone through the South in 1860 in +the patriotic hope that he might avert the impending Civil War. He +had induced the legislature to establish the first public school for +deaf-mutes, the school that drew Bell to Boston in 1871. And he had been +for years a most restless agitator for improvements in telegraphy and +the post office. So, as a promoter of schemes for the public good, +Hubbard was by no means a novice. His first step toward capturing +the attention of an indifferent nation was to beat the big drum of +publicity. He saw that this new idea of telephoning must be made +familiar to the public mind. He talked telephone by day and by night. +Whenever he travelled, he carried a pair of the magical instruments +in his valise, and gave demonstrations on trains and in hotels. +He buttonholed every influential man who crossed his path. He was a +veritable "Ancient Mariner" of the telephone. No possible listener was +allowed to escape. + +Further to promote this campaign of publicity, Hubbard encouraged Bell +and Watson to perform a series of sensational feats with the telephone. +A telegraph wire between New York and Boston was borrowed for half an +hour, and in the presence of Sir William Thomson, Bell sent a tune +over the two-hundred-and-fifty-mile line. "Can you hear?" he asked the +operator at the New York end. "Elegantly," responded the operator. "What +tune?" asked Bell. "Yankee Doodle," came the answer. Shortly afterwards, +while Bell was visiting at his father's house in Canada, he bought +up all the stove-pipe wire in the town, and tacked it to a rail fence +between the house and a telegraph office. Then he went to a village +eight miles distant and sent scraps of songs and Shakespearean +quotations over the wire. + +There was still a large percentage of people who denied that spoken +words could be transmitted by a wire. When Watson talked to Bell +at public demonstrations, there were newspaper editors who referred +sceptically to "the supposititious Watson." So, to silence these +doubters, Bell and Watson planned a most severe test of the telephone. +They borrowed the telegraph line between Boston and the Cambridge +Observatory, and attached a telephone to each end. Then they maintained, +for three hours or longer, the FIRST SUSTAINED conversation by +telephone, each one taking careful notes of what he said and of what +he heard. These notes were published in parallel columns in The Boston +Advertiser, October 19, 1876, and proved beyond question that the +telephone was now a practical success. + +After this, one event crowded quickly on the heels of another. A series +of ten lectures was arranged for Bell, at a hundred dollars a lecture, +which was the first money payment he had received for his invention. His +opening night was in Salem, before an audience of five hundred people, +and with Mrs. Sand-ers, the motherly old lady who had sheltered Bell in +the days of his experiment, sitting proudly in one of the front seats. +A pole was set up at the front of the hall, supporting the end of a +telegraph wire that ran from Salem to Boston. And Watson, who became the +first public talker by telephone, sent messages from Boston to various +members of the audience. An account of this lecture was sent by +telephone to The Boston Globe, which announced the next morning-- + + +"This special despatch of the Globe has been transmitted by telephone +in the presence of twenty people, who have thus been witnesses to a feat +never before attempted--the sending of news over the space of sixteen +miles by the human voice." + + +This Globe despatch awoke the newspaper editors with an unexpected jolt. +For the first time they began to notice that there was a new word in the +language, and a new idea in the scientific world. No newspaper had made +any mention whatever of the telephone for seventy-five days after Bell +received his patent. Not one of the swarm of reporters who thronged the +Philadelphia Centennial had regarded the telephone as a matter of any +public interest. But when a column of news was sent by telephone to +The Boston Globe, the whole newspaper world was agog with excitement. +A thousand pens wrote the name of Bell. Requests to repeat his lecture +came to Bell from Cyrus W. Field, the veteran of the Atlantic Cable, +from the poet Longfellow, and from many others. + +As he was by profession an elocutionist, Bell was able to make the most +of these opportunities. His lectures became popular entertainments. They +were given in the largest halls. At one lecture two Japanese gentlemen +were induced to talk to one another in their own language, via the +telephone. At a second lecture a band played "The Star-Spangled Banner," +in Boston, and was heard by an audience of two thousand people in +Providence. At a third, Signor Ferranti, who was in Providence, sang a +selection from "The Marriage of Figaro" to an audience in Boston. At a +fourth, an exhortation from Moody and a song from Sankey came over the +vibrating wire. And at a fifth, in New Haven, Bell stood sixteen Yale +professors in line, hand in hand, and talked through their bodies--a +feat which was then, and is to-day, almost too wonderful to believe. + +Very slowly these lectures, and the tireless activity of Hubbard, pushed +back the ridicule and the incredulity; and in the merry month of May, +1877, a man named Emery drifted into Hubbard's office from the near-by +city of Charlestown, and leased two telephones for twenty actual +dollars--the first money ever paid for a telephone. This was the first +feeble sign that such a novelty as the telephone business could be +established; and no money ever looked handsomer than this twenty dollars +did to Bell, Sanders, Hubbard, and Watson. It was the tiny first-fruit +of fortune. + +Greatly encouraged, they prepared a little circular which was the first +advertisement of the telephone business. It is an oddly simple little +document to-day, but to the 1877 brain it was startling. It modestly +claimed that a telephone was superior to a telegraph for three reasons: + + +"(1) No skilled operator is required, but direct communication may be +had by speech without the intervention of a third person. + + +"(2) The communication is much more rapid, the average number of words +transmitted in a minute by the Morse sounder being from fifteen to +twenty, by telephone from one to two hundred. + + +"(3) No expense is required, either for its operation or repair. It +needs no battery and has no complicated machinery. It is unsurpassed for +economy and simplicity." + + +The only telephone line in the world at this time was between the +Williams' workshop in Boston and the home of Mr. Williams in Somerville. +But in May, 1877, a young man named E. T. Holmes, who was running a +burglar-alarm business in Boston, proposed that a few telephones be +linked to his wires. He was a friend and customer of Williams, and +suggested this plan half in jest and half in earnest. Hubbard was quick +to seize this opportunity, and at once lent Holmes a dozen telephones. +Without asking permission, Holmes went into six banks and nailed up +a telephone in each. Five bankers made no protest, but the sixth +indignantly ordered "that playtoy" to be taken out. The other five +telephones could be connected by a switch in Holmes's office, and thus +was born the first tiny and crude Telephone Exchange. Here it ran for +several weeks as a telephone system by day and a burglar-alarm by night. +No money was paid by the bankers. The service was given to them as +an exhibition and an advertisement. The little shelf with its five +telephones was no more like the marvellous exchanges of to-day than +a canoe is like a Cunarder, but it was unquestionably the first place +where several telephone wires came together and could be united. + +Soon afterwards, Holmes took his telephones out of the banks, and +started a real telephone business among the express companies of +Boston. But by this time several exchanges had been opened for ordinary +business, in New Haven, Bridgeport, New York, and Philadelphia. Also, +a man from Michigan had arrived, with the hardihood to ask for a State +agency--George W. Balch, of Detroit. He was so welcome that Hubbard +joyfully gave him everything he asked--a perpetual right to the whole +State of Michigan. Balch was not required to pay a cent in advance, +except his railway fare, and before he was many years older he had sold +his lease for a handsome fortune of a quarter of a million dollars, +honestly earned by his initiative and enterprise. + +By August, when Bell's patent was sixteen months old, there were 778 +telephones in use. This looked like success to the optimistic Hubbard. +He decided that the time had come to organize the business, so +he created a simple agreement which he called the "Bell Telephone +Association." This agreement gave Bell, Hubbard and Sanders a +three-tenths interest apiece in the patents, and Watson one-tenth. THERE +WAS NO CAPITAL. There was none to be had. The four men had at this time +an absolute monopoly of the telephone business; and everybody else was +quite willing that they should have it. + +The only man who had money and dared to stake it on the future of the +telephone was Thomas Sanders, and he did this not mainly for business +reasons. Both he and Hubbard were attached to Bell primarily by +sentiment, as Bell had removed the blight of dumbness from Sanders's +little son, and was soon to marry Hubbard's daughter. + +Also, Sanders had no expectation, at first, that so much money would be +needed. He was not rich. His entire business, which was that of cutting +out soles for shoe manufacturers, was not at any time worth more than +thirty-five thousand dollars. Yet, from 1874 to 1878, he had advanced +nine-tenths of the money that was spent on the telephone. He had paid +Bell's room-rent, and Watson's wages, and Williams's expenses, and +the cost of the exhibit at the Centennial. The first five thousand +telephones, and more, were made with his money. And so many long, +expensive months dragged by before any relief came to Sanders, that +he was compelled, much against his will and his business judgment, to +stretch his credit within an inch of the breaking-point to help Bell and +the telephone. Desperately he signed note after note until he faced a +total of one hundred and ten thousand dollars. If the new "scientific +toy" succeeded, which he often doubted, he would be the richest citizen +in Haverhill; and if it failed, which he sorely feared, he would be a +bankrupt. + +A disheartening series of rebuffs slowly forced the truth in upon +Sanders's mind that the business world refused to accept the telephone +as an article of commerce. It was a toy, a plaything, a scientific +wonder, but not a necessity to be bought and used for ordinary purposes +by ordinary people. Capitalists treated it exactly as they treated the +Atlantic Cable project when Cyrus Field visited Boston in 1862. They +admired and marvelled; but not a man subscribed a dollar. Also, Sanders +very soon learned that it was a most unpropitious time for the setting +afloat of a new enterprise. It was a period of turmoil and suspicion. +What with the Jay Cooke failure, the Hayes-Tilden deadlock, and the +bursting of a hundred railroad bubbles, there was very little in the +news of the day to encourage investors. + +It was impossible for Sanders, or Bell, or Hubbard, to prepare any +definite plan. No matter what the plan might have been, they had no +money to put it through. They believed that they had something new and +marvellous, which some one, somewhere, would be willing to buy. Until +this good genie should arrive, they could do no more than flounder +ahead, and take whatever business was the nearest and the cheapest. So +while Bell, in eloquent rhapsodies, painted word-pictures of a universal +telephone service to applauding audiences, Sanders and Hubbard were +leasing telephones two by two, to business men who previously had been +using the private lines of the Western Union Telegraph Company. + +This great corporation was at the time their natural and inevitable +enemy. It had swallowed most of its competitors, and was reaching out to +monopolize all methods of communication by wire. The rosiest hope that +shone in front of Sanders and Hubbard was that the Western Union might +conclude to buy the Bell patents, just as it had already bought many +others. In one moment of discouragement they had offered the telephone +to President Orton, of the Western Union, for $100,000; and Orton had +refused it. "What use," he asked pleasantly, "could this company make of +an electrical toy?" + +But besides the operation of its own wires, the Western Union was +supplying customers with various kinds of printing-telegraphs and dial +telegraphs, some of which could transmit sixty words a minute. These +accurate instruments, it believed, could never be displaced by such a +scientific oddity as the telephone. And it continued to believe this +until one of its subsidiary companies--the Gold and Stock--reported that +several of its machines had been superseded by telephones. + +At once the Western Union awoke from its indifference. Even this tiny +nibbling at its business must be stopped. It took action quickly and +organized the "American Speaking-Telephone Company," with $300,000 +capital, and with three electrical inventors, Edison, Gray, and Dolbear, +on its staff. With all the bulk of its great wealth and prestige, it +swept down upon Bell and his little bodyguard. It trampled upon Bell's +patent with as little concern as an elephant can have when he tramples +upon an ant's nest. To the complete bewilderment of Bell, it coolly +announced that it had "the only original telephone," and that it was +ready to supply "superior telephones with all the latest improvements +made by the original inventors--Dolbear, Gray, and Edison." + +The result was strange and unexpected. The Bell group, instead of being +driven from the field, were at once lifted to a higher level in the +business world. The effect was as if the Standard Oil Company were to +commence the manufacture of aeroplanes. In a flash, the telephone ceased +to be a "scientific toy," and became an article of commerce. It began +for the first time to be taken seriously. And the Western Union, in +the endeavor to protect its private lines, became involuntarily a +bell-wether to lead capitalists in the direction of the telephone. + +Sanders's relatives, who were many and rich, came to his rescue. Most of +them were well-known business men--the Bradleys, the Saltonstalls, +Fay, Silsbee, and Carlton. These men, together with Colonel William +H. Forbes, who came in as a friend of the Bradleys, were the first +capitalists who, for purely business reasons, invested money in the +Bell patents. Two months after the Western Union had given its weighty +endorsement to the telephone, these men organized a company to do +business in New England only, and put fifty thousand dollars in its +treasury. + +In a short time the delighted Hubbard found himself leasing telephones +at the rate of a thousand a month. He was no longer a promoter, but a +general manager. Men were standing in line to ask for agencies. Crude +little telephone exchanges were being started in a dozen or more cities. +There was a spirit of confidence and enterprise; and the next step, +clearly, was to create a business organization. None of the partners +were competent to undertake such a work. Hubbard had little aptitude as +an organizer; Bell had none; and Sanders was held fast by his leather +interests. Here, at last, after four years of the most heroic effort, +were the raw materials out of which a telephone business could be +constructed. But who was to be the builder, and where was he to be +found? + +One morning the indefatigable Hubbard solved the problem. "Watson," he +said, "there's a young man in Washington who can handle this situation, +and I want you to run down and see what you think of him." Watson went, +reported favorably, and in a day or so the young man received a letter +from Hubbard, offering him the position of General Manager, at a salary +of thirty-five hundred dollars a year. "We rely," Hubbard said, "upon +your executive ability, your fidelity, and unremitting zeal." The +young man replied, in one of those dignified letters more usual in the +nineteenth than in the twentieth century. "My faith in the success of +the enterprise is such that I am willing to trust to it," he wrote, "and +I have confidence that we shall establish the harmony and cooperation +that is essential to the success of an enterprise of this kind." One +week later the young man, Theodore N. Vail, took his seat as General +Manager in a tiny office in Reade Street, New York, and the building of +the business began. + +This arrival of Vail at the critical moment emphasized the fact that +Bell was one of the most fortunate of inventors. He was not robbed of +his invention, as might easily have happened. One by one there arrived +to help him a number of able men, with all the various abilities that +the changing situation required. There was such a focussing of factors +that the whole matter appeared to have been previously rehearsed. No +sooner had Bell appeared on the stage than his supporting players, each +in his turn, received his cue and took part in the action of the drama. +There was not one of these men who could have done the work of any +other. Each was distinctive and indispensable. Bell invented the +telephone; Watson constructed it; Sanders financed it; Hubbard +introduced it; and Vail put it on a business basis. + +The new General Manager had, of course, no experience in the telephone +business. Neither had any one else. But he, like Bell, came to his task +with a most surprising fitness. He was a member of the historic Vail +family of Morristown, New Jersey, which had operated the Speedwell Iron +Works for four or five generations. His grand-uncle Stephen had built +the engines for the Savannah, the first American steamship to cross the +Atlantic Ocean; and his cousin Alfred was the friend and co-worker of +Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. Morse had lived for several years +at the Vail homestead in Morristown; and it was here that he erected +his first telegraph line, a three-mile circle around the Iron Works, in +1838. He and Alfred Vail experimented side by side in the making of the +telegraph, and Vail eventually received a fortune for his share of the +Morse patent. + +Thus it happened that young Theodore Vail learned the dramatic story +of Morse at his mother's knee. As a boy, he played around the first +telegraph line, and learned to put messages on the wire. His favorite +toy was a little telegraph that he constructed for himself. At +twenty-two he went West, in the vague hope of possessing a bonanza farm; +then he swung back into telegraphy, and in a few years found himself in +the Government Mail Service at Washington. By 1876, he was at the head +of this Department, which he completely reorganized. He introduced the +bag system in postal cars, and made war on waste and clumsiness. By +virtue of this position he was the one man in the United States who had +a comprehensive view of all railways and telegraphs. He was much more +apt, consequently, than other men to develop the idea of a national +telephone system. + +While in the midst of this bureaucratic house-cleaning he met Hubbard, +who had just been appointed by President Hayes as the head of a +commission on mail transportation. He and Hubbard were constantly thrown +together, on trains and in hotels; and as Hubbard invariably had a pair +of telephones in his valise, the two men soon became co-enthusiasts. +Vail found himself painting brain-pictures of the future of the +telephone, and by the time that he was asked to become its General +Manager, he had become so confident that, as he said afterwards, he "was +willing to leave a Government job with a small salary for a telephone +job with no salary." + +So, just as Amos Kendall had left the post office service thirty years +before to establish the telegraph business, Theodore N. Vail left the +post office service to establish the telephone business. He had been +in authority over thirty-five hundred postal employees, and was the +developer of a system that covered every inhabited portion of the +country. Consequently, he had a quality of experience that was immensely +valuable in straightening out the tangled affairs of the telephone. Line +by line, he mapped out a method, a policy, a system. He introduced +a larger view of the telephone business, and swept off the table all +schemes for selling out. He persuaded half a dozen of his post office +friends to buy stock, so that in less than two months the first "Bell +Telephone Company" was organized, with $450,000 capital and a service of +twelve thousand telephones. + +Vail's first step, naturally, was to stiffen up the backbone of this +little company, and to prevent the Western Union from frightening it +into a surrender. He immediately sent a copy of Bell's patent to every +agent, with orders to hold the fort against all opposition. "We have +the only original telephone patents," he wrote; "we have organized and +introduced the business, and we do not propose to have it taken from us +by any corporation." To one agent, who was showing the white feather, he +wrote: + + +"You have too great an idea of the Western Union. If it was all massed +in your one city you might well fear it; but it is represented there by +one man only, and he has probably as much as he can attend to outside of +the telephone. For you to acknowledge that you cannot compete with his +influence when you make it your special business, is hardly the thing. +There may be a dozen concerns that will all go to the Western Union, but +they will not take with them all their friends. I would advise that you +go ahead and keep your present advantage. We must organize companies +with sufficient vitality to carry on a fight, as it is simply useless to +get a company started that will succumb to the first bit of opposition +it may encounter." + + +Next, having encouraged his thoroughly alarmed agents, Vail proceeded to +build up a definite business policy. He stiffened up the contracts and +made them good for five years only. He confined each agent to one place, +and reserved all rights to connect one city with another. He established +a department to collect and protect any new inventions that concerned +the telephone. He agreed to take part of the royalties in stock, when +any local company preferred to pay its debts in this way. And he took +steps toward standardizing all telephonic apparatus by controlling the +factories that made it. + +These various measures were part of Vail's plan to create a national +telephone system. His central idea, from the first, was not the mere +leasing of telephones, but rather the creation of a Federal company that +would be a permanent partner in the entire telephone business. Even in +that day of small things, and amidst the confusion and rough-and-tumble +of pioneering, he worked out the broad policy that prevails to-day; and +this goes far to explain the fact that there are in the United States +twice as many telephones as there are in all other countries combined. + +Vail arrived very much as Blucher did at the battle of Waterloo--a +trifle late, but in time to prevent the telephone forces from being +routed by the Old Guard of the Western Union. He was scarcely seated in +his managerial chair, when the Western Union threw the entire Bell army +into confusion by launching the Edison transmitter. Edison, who was +at that time fairly started in his career of wizardry, had made an +instrument of marvellous alertness. It was beyond all argument superior +to the telephones then in use and the lessees of Bell telephones +clamored with one voice for "a transmitter as good as Edison's." This, +of course, could not be had in a moment, and the five months that +followed were the darkest days in the childhood of the telephone. + +How to compete with the Western Union, which had this superior +transmitter, a host of agents, a network of wires, forty millions of +capital, and a first claim upon all newspapers, hotels, railroads, and +rights of way--that was the immediate problem that confronted the new +General Manager. Every inch of progress had to be fought for. Several +of his captains deserted, and he was compelled to take control of their +unprofitable exchanges. There was scarcely a mail that did not bring him +some bulletin of discouragement or defeat. + +In the effort to conciliate a hostile public, the telephone rates had +everywhere been made too low. Hubbard had set a price of twenty dollars +a year, for the use of two telephones on a private line; and when +exchanges were started, the rate was seldom more than three dollars +a month. There were deadheads in abundance, mostly officials and +politicians. In St. Louis, one of the few cities that charged a +sufficient price, nine-tenths of the merchants refused to become +subscribers. In Boston, the first pay-station ran three months before it +earned a dollar. Even as late as 1880, when the first National Telephone +Convention was held at Niagara Falls, one of the delegates expressed the +general situation very correctly when he said: "We were all in a state +of enthusiastic uncertainty. We were full of hope, yet when we analyzed +those hopes they were very airy indeed. There was probably not one +company that could say it was making a cent, nor even that it EXPECTED +to make a cent." + +Especially in the largest cities, where the Western Union had most +power, the lives of the telephone pioneers were packed with hardships +and adventures. In Philadelphia, for instance, a resolute young man +named Thomas E. Cornish was attacked as though he had suddenly become a +public enemy, when he set out to establish the first telephone service. +No official would grant him a permit to string wires. His workmen were +arrested. The printing-telegraph men warned him that he must either quit +or be driven out. When he asked capitalists for money, they replied that +he might as well expect to lease jew's-harps as telephones. Finally, he +was compelled to resort to strategy where argument had failed. He had +received an order from Colonel Thomas Scott, who wanted a wire between +his house and his office. Colonel Scott was the President of the +Pennsylvania Railroad, and therefore a man of the highest prestige in +the city. So as soon as Cornish had put this line in place, he kept his +men at work stringing other lines. When the police interfered, he showed +them Colonel Scott's signature and was let alone. In this way he put +fifteen wires up before the trick was discovered; and soon afterwards, +with eight subscribers, he founded the first Philadelphia exchange. + +As may be imagined, such battling as this did not put much money into +the treasury of the parent company; and the letters written by Sanders +at this time prove that it was in a hard plight. + +The following was one of the queries put to Hubbard by the overburdened +Sanders: + +"How on earth do you expect me to meet a draft of two hundred and +seventy-five dollars without a dollar in the treasury, and with a debt +of thirty thousand dollars staring us in the face?" "Vail's salary is +small enough," he continued in a second letter, "but as to where it is +coming from I am not so clear. Bradley is awfully blue and discouraged. +Williams is tormenting me for money and my personal credit will not +stand everything. I have advanced the Company two thousand dollars +to-day, and Williams must have three thousand dollars more this month. +His pay-day has come and his capital will not carry him another inch. +If Bradley throws up his hand, I will unfold to you my last desperate +plan." + +And if the company had little money, it had less credit. Once when Vail +had ordered a small bill of goods from a merchant named Tillotson, of +15 Dey Street, New York, the merchant replied that the goods were ready, +and so was the bill, which was seven dollars. By a strange coincidence, +the magnificent building of the New York Telephone Company stands to-day +on the site of Tillotson's store. + +Month after month, the little Bell Company lived from hand to mouth. No +salaries were paid in full. Often, for weeks, they were not paid at all. +In Watson's note-book there are such entries during this period as +"Lent Bell fifty cents," "Lent Hubbard twenty cents," "Bought one bottle +beer--too bad can't have beer every day." More than once Hubbard would +have gone hungry had not Devonshire, the only clerk, shared with him +the contents of a dinner-pail. Each one of the little group was beset by +taunts and temptations. Watson was offered ten thousand dollars for +his one-tenth interest, and hesitated three days before refusing it. +Railroad companies offered Vail a salary that was higher and sure, if he +would superintend their mail business. And as for Sanders, his folly was +the talk of Haverhill. One Haverhill capitalist, E. J. M. Hale, stopped +him on the street and asked, "Have n't you got a good leather business, +Mr. Sanders?" "Yes," replied Sanders. "Well," said Hale, "you had better +attend to it and quit playing on wind instruments." Sanders's banker, +too, became uneasy on one occasion and requested him to call at the +bank. "Mr. Sanders," he said, "I will be obliged if you will take that +telephone stock out of the bank, and give me in its place your note for +thirty thousand dollars. I am expecting the examiner here in a few days, +and I don't want to get caught with that stuff in the bank." + +Then, in the very midnight of this depression, poor Bell returned from +England, whither he and his bride had gone on their honeymoon, and +announced that he had no money; that he had failed to establish a +telephone business in England; and that he must have a thousand dollars +at once to pay his urgent debts. He was thoroughly discouraged and sick. +As he lay in the Massachusetts General Hospital, he wrote a cry for help +to the embattled little company that was making its desperate fight to +protect his patents. "Thousands of telephones are now in operation in +all parts of the country," he said, "yet I have not yet received one +cent from my invention. On the contrary, I am largely out of pocket +by my researches, as the mere value of the profession that I have +sacrificed during my three years' work, amounts to twelve thousand +dollars." + +Fortunately, there came, in almost the same mail with Bell's letter, +another letter from a young Bostonian named Francis Blake, with the good +news that he had invented a transmitter as satisfactory as Edison's, and +that he would prefer to sell it for stock instead of cash. If ever a man +came as an angel of light, that man was Francis Blake. The possession of +his transmitter instantly put the Bell Company on an even footing with +the Western Union, in the matter of apparatus. It encouraged the few +capitalists who had invested money, and it stirred others to come +forward. The general business situation had by this time become +more settled, and in four months the company had twenty-two thousand +telephones in use, and had reorganized into the National Bell Telephone +Company, with $850, 000 capital and with Colonel Forbes as its first +President. Forbes now picked up the load that had been carried so long +by Sanders. As the son of an East India merchant and the son-in-law of +Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was a Bostonian of the Brahmin caste. He was +a big, four-square man who was both popular and efficient; and his +leadership at this crisis was of immense value. + +This reorganization put the telephone business into the hands of +competent business men at every point. It brought the heroic and +experimental period to an end. From this time onwards the telephone +had strong friends in the financial world. It was being attacked by +the Western Union and by rival inventors who were jealous of Bell's +achievement. It was being half-starved by cheap rates and crippled by +clumsy apparatus. It was being abused and grumbled at by an impatient +public. But the art of making and marketing it had at last been built +up into a commercial enterprise. It was now a business, fighting for its +life. + + + +CHAPTER III. THE HOLDING OF THE BUSINESS + +For seventeen months no one disputed Bell's claim to be the original +inventor of the telephone. All the honor, such as it was, had been given +to him freely, and no one came forward to say that it was not rightfully +his. No one, so far as we know, had any strong desire to do so. No one +conceived that the telephone would ever be any more than a whimsical +oddity of science. It was so new, so unexpected, that from Lord +Kelvin down to the messenger boys in the telegraph offices, it was an +incomprehensible surprise. But after Bell had explained his invention +in public lectures before more than twenty thousand people, after it +had been on exhibition for months at the Philadelphia Centennial, after +several hundred articles on it had appeared in newspapers and scientific +magazines, and after actual sales of telephones had been made in +various parts of the country, there began to appear such a succession of +claimants and infringers that the forgetful public came to believe that +the telephone, like most inventions, was the product of many minds. + +Just as Morse, who was the sole inventor of the American telegraph in +1837, was confronted by sixty-two rivals in 1838, so Bell, who was the +sole inventor in 1876, found himself two years later almost mobbed by +the "Tichborne claimants" of the telephone. The inventors who had been +his competitors in the attempt to produce a musical telegraph, persuaded +themselves that they had unconsciously done as much as he. Any possessor +of a telegraphic patent, who had used the common phrase "talking wire," +had a chance to build up a plausible story of prior invention. And +others came forward with claims so vague and elusive that Bell would +scarcely have been more surprised if the heirs of Goethe had demanded a +share of the telephone royalties on the ground that Faust had spoken of +"making a bridge through the moving air." + +This babel of inventors and pretenders amazed Bell and disconcerted his +backers. But it was no more than might have been expected. Here was +a patent--"the most valuable single patent ever issued"--and yet the +invention itself was so simple that it could be duplicated easily by any +smart boy or any ordinary mechanic. The making of a telephone was like +the trick of Columbus standing an egg on end. Nothing was easier to +those who knew how. And so it happened that, as the crude little +model of Bell's original telephone lay in the Patent Office open and +unprotected except by a few phrases that clever lawyers might evade, +there sprang up inevitably around it the most costly and persistent +Patent War that any country has ever known, continuing for eleven years +and comprising SIX HUNDRED LAWSUITS. + +The first attack upon the young telephone business was made by the +Western Union Telegraph Company. It came charging full tilt upon Bell, +driving three inventors abreast--Edison, Gray, and Dolbear. It expected +an easy victory; in fact, the disparity between the two opponents was so +evident, that there seemed little chance of a contest of any kind. +"The Western Union will swallow up the telephone people," said public +opinion, "just as it has already swallowed up all improvements in +telegraphy." + +At that time, it should be remembered, the Western Union was the only +corporation that was national in its extent. It was the most powerful +electrical company in the world, and, as Bell wrote to his parents, +"probably the largest corporation that ever existed." It had behind it +not only forty millions of capital, but the prestige of the Vanderbilts, +and the favor of financiers everywhere. Also, it met the telephone +pioneers at every point because it, too, was a WIRE company. It owned +rights-of-way along roads and on house-tops. It had a monopoly of hotels +and railroad offices. No matter in what direction the Bell Company +turned, the live wire of the Western Union lay across its path. + +From the first, the Western Union relied more upon its strength than +upon the merits of its case. Its chief electrical expert, Frank L. Pope, +had made a six months' examination of the Bell patents. He had bought +every book in the United States and Europe that was likely to have any +reference to the transmission of speech, and employed a professor +who knew eight languages to translate them. He and his men ransacked +libraries and patent offices; they rummaged and sleuthed and +interviewed; and found nothing of any value. In his final report to +the Western Union, Mr. Pope announced that there was no way to make +a telephone except Bell's way, and advised the purchase of the Bell +patents. "I am entirely unable to discover any apparatus or method +anticipating the invention of Bell as a whole," he said; "and I conclude +that his patent is valid." But the officials of the great corporation +refused to take this report seriously. They threw it aside and employed +Edison, Gray, and Dolbear to devise a telephone that could be put into +competition with Bell's. + +As we have seen in the previous chapter, there now came a period +of violent competition which is remembered as the Dark Ages of the +telephone business. The Western Union bought out several of the Bell +exchanges and opened up a lively war on the others. As befitting its +size, it claimed everything. It introduced Gray as the original inventor +of the telephone, and ordered its lawyers to take action at once against +the Bell Company for infringement of the Gray patent. This high-handed +action, it hoped, would most quickly bring the little Bell group into +a humble and submissive frame of mind. Every morning the Western Union +looked to see the white flag flying over the Bell headquarters. But +no white flag appeared. On the contrary, the news came that the Bell +Company had secured two eminent lawyers and were ready to give battle. + +The case began in the Autumn of 1878 and lasted for a year. Then it +came to a sudden and most unexpected ending. The lawyer-in-chief of +the Western Union was George Gifford, who was perhaps the ablest patent +attorney of his day. He was versed in patent lore from Alpha to Omega; +and as the trial proceeded, he became convinced that the Bell patent was +valid. He notified the Western Union confidentially, of course, that its +case could not be proven, and that "Bell was the original inventor of +the telephone." The best policy, he suggested, was to withdraw their +claims and make a settlement. This wise advice was accepted, and the +next day the white flag was hauled up, not by the little group of Bell +fighters, who were huddled together in a tiny, two-room office, but by +the mighty Western Union itself, which had been so arrogant when the +encounter began. + +A committee of three from each side was appointed, and after months of +disputation, a treaty of peace was drawn up and signed. By the terms of +this treaty the Western Union agreed-- + +(1) To admit that Bell was the original inventor. + +(2) To admit that his patents were valid. + +(3) To retire from the telephone business. + + +The Bell Company, in return for this surrender, agreed-- + +(1) To buy the Western Union telephone system. + +(2) To pay the Western Union a royalty of twenty per cent on all +telephone rentals. + +(3) To keep out of the telegraph business. + + +This agreement, which was to remain in force for seventeen years, was a +master-stroke of diplomacy on the part of the Bell Company. It was the +Magna Charta of the telephone. It transformed a giant competitor into +a friend. It added to the Bell System fifty-six thousand telephones in +fifty-five cities. And it swung the valiant little company up to such a +pinnacle of prosperity that its stock went skyrocketing until it touched +one thousand dollars a share. + +The Western Union had lost its case, for several very simple reasons: +It had tried to operate a telephone system on telegraphic lines, a +plan that has invariably been unsuccessful, it had a low idea of the +possibilities of the telephone business; and its already busy agents had +little time or knowledge or enthusiasm to give to the new enterprise. +With all its power, it found itself outfought by this compact body of +picked men, who were young, zealous, well-handled, and protected by a +most invulnerable patent. + +The Bell Telephone now took its place with the Telegraph, the Railroad, +the Steamboat, the Harvester, and the other necessities of a civilized +country. Its pioneer days were over. There was no more ridicule and +incredulity. Every one knew that the Bell people had whipped the +Western Union, and hastened to join in the grand Te Deum of applause. +Within five months from the signing of the agreement, there had to be +a reorganization; and the American Bell Telephone Company was created, +with six million dollars capital. In the following year, 1881, twelve +hundred new towns and cities were marked on the telephone map, and +the first dividends were paid--$178,500. And in 1882 there came such +a telephone boom that the Bell System was multiplied by two, with more +than a million dollars of gross earnings. + +At this point all the earliest pioneers of the telephone, except Vail, +pass out of its history. Thomas Sanders sold his stock for somewhat less +than a million dollars, and presently lost most of it in a Colorado gold +mine. His mother, who had been so good a friend to Bell, had her fortune +doubled. Gardiner G. Hubbard withdrew from business life, and as it was +impossible for a man of his ardent temperament to be idle, he plunged +into the National Geographical Society. He was a Colonel Sellers whose +dream of millions (for the telephone) had come true; and when he died, +in 1897, he was rich both in money and in the affection of his friends. +Charles Williams, in whose workshop the first telephones were made, sold +his factory to the Bell Company in 1881 for more money than he had ever +expected to possess. Thomas A. Watson resigned at the same time, finding +himself no longer a wage-worker but a millionaire. Several years later +he established a shipbuilding plant near Boston, which grew until it +employed four thousand workmen and had built half a dozen warships for +the United States Navy. + +As for Bell, the first cause of the telephone business, he did what a +true scientific Bohemian might have been expected to do; he gave all +his stock to his bride on their marriage-day and resumed his work as an +instructor of deaf-mutes. Few kings, if any, had ever given so rich a +wedding present; and certainly no one in any country ever obtained and +tossed aside an immense fortune as incidentally as did Bell. When the +Bell Company offered him a salary of ten thousand dollars a year to +remain its chief inventor, he refused the offer cheerfully on the ground +that he could not "invent to order." In 1880, the French Government gave +him the Volta Prize of fifty thousand francs and the Cross of the Legion +of Honor. He has had many honors since then, and many interests. He +has been for thirty years one of the most brilliant and picturesque +personalities in American public life. But none of his later +achievements can in any degree compare with what he did in a cellar in +Salem, at twenty-eight years of age. + +They had all become rich, these first friends of the telephone, but not +fabulously so. There was not at that time, nor has there been since, any +one who became a multimillionaire by the sale of telephone service. If +the Bell Company had sold its stock at the highest price reached, in +1880, it would have received less than nine million dollars--a huge +sum, but not too much to pay for the invention of the telephone and the +building up of a new art and a new industry. It was not as much as the +value of the eggs laid during the last twelve months by the hens of +Iowa. + +But, as may be imagined, when the news of the Western Union agreement +became known, the story of the telephone became a fairy tale of success. +Theodore Vail was given a banquet by his old-time friends in the +Washington postal service, and toasted as "the Monte Cristo of the +Telephone." It was said that the actual cost of the Bell plant was only +one-twenty-fifth of its capital, and that every four cents of investment +had thus become a dollar. Even Jay Gould, carried beyond his usual +caution by these stories, ran up to New Haven and bought its telephone +company, only to find out later that its earnings were less than its +expenses. + +Much to the bewilderment of the Bell Company, it soon learned that the +troubles of wealth are as numerous as those of poverty. It was beset by +a throng of promoters and stock-jobbers, who fell upon it and upon +the public like a swarm of seventeen-year locusts. In three years, +one hundred and twenty-five competing companies were started, in open +defiance of the Bell patents. The main object of these companies was +not, like that of the Western Union, to do a legitimate telephone +business, but to sell stock to the public. The face value of their stock +was $225,000,000, although few of them ever sent a message. One company +of unusual impertinence, without money or patents, had capitalized its +audacity at $15,000,000. + +How to HOLD the business that had been established--that was now the +problem. None of the Bell partners had been mere stock-jobbers. At one +time they had even taken a pledge not to sell any of their stock to +outsiders. They had financed their company in a most honest and simple +way; and they were desperately opposed to the financial banditti whose +purpose was to transform the telephone business into a cheat and a +gamble. At first, having held their own against the Western Union, they +expected to make short work of the stock-jobbers. But it was a vain +hope. These bogus companies, they found, did not fight in the open, as +the Western Union had done. + +All manner of injurious rumors were presently set afloat concerning +the Bell patent. Other inventors--some of them honest men, and some +shameless pretenders--were brought forward with strangely concocted +tales of prior invention. The Granger movement was at that time a strong +political factor in the Middle West, and its blind fear of patents and +"monopolies" was turned aggressively against the Bell Company. A few +Senators and legitimate capitalists were lifted up as the figureheads of +the crusade. And a loud hue-and-cry was raised in the newspapers against +"high rates and monopoly" to distract the minds of the people from the +real issue of legitimate business versus stock-company bubbles. + +The most plausible and persistent of all the various inventors who +snatched at Bell's laurels, was Elisha Gray. He refused to abide by the +adverse decision of the court. Several years after his defeat, he came +forward with new weapons and new methods of attack. He became more +hostile and irreconcilable; and until his death, in 1901, never +renounced his claim to be the original inventor of the telephone. + +The reason for this persistence is very evident. Gray was a professional +inventor, a highly competent man who had begun his career as a +blacksmith's apprentice, and risen to be a professor of Oberlin. He +made, during his lifetime, over five million dollars by his patents. +In 1874, he and Bell were running a neck-and-neck race to see who could +first invent a musical telegraph--when, presto! Bell suddenly turned +aside, because of his acoustical knowledge, and invented the telephone, +while Gray kept straight ahead. Like all others who were in quest of a +better telegraph instrument, Gray had glimmerings of the possibility of +sending speech by wire, and by one of the strangest of coincidences +he filed a caveat on the subject on the SAME DAY that Bell filed the +application for a patent. Bell had arrived first. As the record book +shows, the fifth entry on that day was: "A. G. Bell, $15"; and the +thirty-ninth entry was "E. Gray, $10." + +There was a vast difference between Gray's caveat and Bell's +application. A caveat is a declaration that the writer has NOT invented +a thing, but believes that he is about to do so; while an APPLICATION is +a declaration that the writer has already perfected the invention. But +Gray could never forget that he had seemed to be, for a time, so close +to the golden prize; and seven years after he had been set aside by the +Western Union agreement, he reappeared with claims that had grown larger +and more definite. + +When all the evidence in the various Gray lawsuits is sifted out, there +appear to have been three distinctly different Grays: first, Gray the +SCOFFER, who examined Bell's telephone at the Centennial and said it +was "nothing but the old lover's telegraph. It is impossible to make +a practical speaking telephone on the principle shown by Professor +Bell.... The currents are too feeble"; second, Gray the CONVERT, who +wrote frankly to Bell in 1877, "I do not claim the credit of inventing +it"; and third, Gray the CLAIMANT, who endeavored to prove in 1886 that +he was the original inventor. His real position in the matter was once +well and wittily described by his partner, Enos M. Barton, who said: "Of +all the men who DIDN'T invent the telephone, Gray was the nearest." + +It is now clearly seen that the telephone owes nothing to Gray. There +are no Gray telephones in use in any country. Even Gray himself, as he +admitted in court, failed when he tried to make a telephone on the lines +laid down in his caveat. The final word on the whole matter was recently +spoken by George C. Maynard, who established the telephone business in +the city of Washington. Said Mr. Maynard: + + +"Mr. Gray was an intimate and valued friend of mine, but it is no +disrespect to his memory to say that on some points involved in the +telephone matter, he was mistaken. No subject was ever so thoroughly +investigated as the invention of the speaking telephone. No patent has +ever been submitted to such determined assault from every direction as +Bell's; and no inventor has ever been more completely vindicated. Bell +was the first inventor, and Gray was not." + + +After Gray, the weightiest challenger who came against Bell was +Professor Amos E. Dolbear, of Tufts College. He, like Gray, had written +a letter of applause to Bell in 1877. "I congratulate you, sir," he +said, "upon your very great invention, and I hope to see it supplant +all forms of existing telegraphs, and that you will be successful in +obtaining the wealth and honor which is your due." But one year later, +Dolbear came to view with an opposition telephone. It was not an +imitation of Bell's, he insisted, but an improvement upon an electrical +device made by a German named Philip Reis, in 1861. + +Thus there appeared upon the scene the so-called "Reis telephone," which +was not a telephone at all, in any practical sense, but which served +well enough for nine years or more as a weapon to use against the Bell +patents. Poor Philip Reis himself, the son of a baker in Frankfort, +Germany, had hoped to make a telephone, but he had failed. His machine +was operated by a "make-and-break" current, and so could not carry +the infinitely delicate vibrations made by the human voice. It could +transmit the pitch of a sound, but not the QUALITY. At its best, it +could carry a tune, but never at any time a spoken sentence. Reis, in +his later years, realized that his machine could never be used for the +transmission of conversation; and in a letter to a friend he tells of a +code of signals that he has invented. + +Bell had once, during his three years of experimenting, made a Reis +machine, although at that time he had not seen one. But he soon threw +it aside, as of no practical value. As a teacher of acoustics, Bell knew +that the one indispensable requirement of a telephone is that it shall +transmit the WHOLE of a sound, and not merely the pitch of it. Such +scientists as Lord Kelvin, Joseph Henry, and Edison had seen the little +Reis instrument years before Bell invented the telephone; but they +regarded it as a mere musical toy. It was "not in any sense a speaking +telephone," said Lord Kelvin. And Edison, when trying to put the Reis +machine in the most favorable light, admitted humorously that when he +used a Reis transmitter he generally "knew what was coming; and knowing +what was coming, even a Reis transmitter, pure and simple, reproduces +sounds which seem almost like that which was being transmitted; but +when the man at the other end did not know what was coming, it was very +seldom that any word was recognized." + +In the course of the Dolbear lawsuit, a Reis machine was brought into +court, and created much amusement. It was able to squeak, but not to +speak. Experts and professors wrestled with it in vain. It refused +to transmit one intelligible sentence. "It CAN speak, but it WON'T," +explained one of Dolbear's lawyers. It is now generally known that while +a Reis machine, when clogged and out of order, would transmit a word or +two in an imperfect way, it was built on wrong lines. It was no more a +telephone than a wagon is a sleigh, even though it is possible to chain +the wheels and make them slide for a foot or two. Said Judge Lowell, in +rendering his famous decision: + + +"A century of Reis would never have produced a speaking telephone by +mere improvement of construction. It was left for Bell to discover that +the failure was due not to workmanship but to the principle which was +adopted as the basis of what had to be done. ... Bell discovered a new +art--that of transmitting speech by electricity, and his claim is not as +broad as his invention.... To follow Reis is to fail; but to follow Bell +is to succeed." + + +After the victory over Dolbear, the Bell stock went soaring skywards; +and the higher it went, the greater were the number of infringers and +blowers of stock bubbles. To bait the Bell Company became almost a +national sport. Any sort of claimant, with any sort of wild tale of +prior invention, could find a speculator to support him. On they came, +a motley array, "some in rags, some on nags, and some in velvet gowns." +One of them claimed to have done wonders with an iron hoop and a file +in 1867; a second had a marvellous table with glass legs; a third swore +that he had made a telephone in 1860, but did not know what it was until +he saw Bell's patent; and a fourth told a vivid story of having heard +a bullfrog croak via a telegraph wire which was strung into a certain +cellar in Racine, in 1851. + +This comic opera phase came to a head in the famous Drawbaugh case, +which lasted for nearly four years, and filled ten thousand pages with +its evidence. Having failed on Reis, the German, the opponents of Bell +now brought forward an American inventor named Daniel Drawbaugh, and +opened up a noisy newspaper campaign. To secure public sympathy for +Drawbaugh, it was said that he had invented a complete telephone and +switchboard before 1876, but was in such "utter and abject poverty" that +he could not get himself a patent. Five hundred witnesses were examined; +and such a general turmoil was aroused that the Bell lawyers were +compelled to take the attack seriously, and to fight back with every +pound of ammunition they possessed. + +The fact about Drawbaugh is that he was a mechanic in a country village +near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was ingenious but not inventive; and +loved to display his mechanical skill before the farmers and villagers. +He was a subscriber to The Scientific American; and it had become the +fixed habit of his life to copy other people's inventions and exhibit +them as his own. He was a trailer of inventors. More than forty +instances of this imitative habit were shown at the trial, and he +was severely scored by the judge, who accused him of "deliberately +falsifying the facts." His ruling passion of imitation, apparently, was +not diminished by the loss of his telephone claims, as he came to public +view again in 1903 as a trailer of Marconi. + +Drawbaugh's defeat sent the Bell stock up once more, and brought on a +Xerxes' army of opposition which called itself the "Overland Company." +Having learned that no one claim-ant could beat Bell in the courts, this +company massed the losers together and came forward with a scrap-basket +full of patents. Several powerful capitalists undertook to pay the +expenses of this adventure. Wires were strung; stock was sold; and the +enterprise looked for a time so genuine that when the Bell lawyers asked +for an injunction against it, they were refused. This was as hard a blow +as the Bell people received in their eleven years of litigation; and +the Bell stock tumbled thirty-five points in a few days. Infringing +companies sprang up like gourds in the night. And all went merrily with +the promoters until the Overland Company was thrown out of court, as +having no evidence, except "the refuse and dregs of former cases--the +heel-taps found in the glasses at the end of the frolic." + +But even after this defeat for the claimants, the frolic was not wholly +ended. They next planned to get through politics what they could not get +through law; they induced the Government to bring suit for the annulment +of the Bell patents. It was a bold and desperate move, and enabled the +promoters of paper companies to sell stock for several years longer. The +whole dispute was re-opened, from Gray to Drawbaugh. Every battle was +re-fought; and in the end, of course, the Government officials learned +that they were being used to pull telephone chestnuts out of the fire. +The case was allowed to die a natural death, and was informally dropped +in 1896. + +In all, the Bell Company fought out thirteen lawsuits that were of +national interest, and five that were carried to the Supreme Court in +Washington. It fought out five hundred and eighty-seven other lawsuits +of various natures; and with the exception of two trivial contract +suits, IT NEVER LOST A CASE. + +Its experience is an unanswerable indictment of our system of protecting +inventors. No inventor had ever a clearer title than Bell. The Patent +Office itself, in 1884, made an eighteen-months' investigation of all +telephone patents, and reported: "It is to Bell that the world owes the +possession of the speaking telephone." Yet his patent was continuously +under fire, and never at any time secure. Stock companies whose paper +capital totalled more than $500,000,000 were organized to break it down; +and from first to last the success of the telephone was based much +less upon the monopoly of patents than upon the building up of a well +organized business. + +Fortunately for Bell and the men who upheld him, they were defended by +two master-lawyers who have seldom, if ever, had an equal for team work +and efficiency--Chauncy Smith and James J. Storrow. These two men were +marvellously well mated. Smith was an old-fashioned attorney of the +Websterian sort, dignified, ponderous, and impressive. By 1878, when he +came in to defend the little Bell Company against the towering Western +Union, Smith had become the most noted patent lawyer in Boston. He was a +large, thick-set man, a reminder of Benjamin Franklin, with clean-shaven +face, long hair curling at the ends, frock coat, high collar, and beaver +hat. + +Storrow, on the contrary, was a small man, quiet in manner, +conversational in argument, and an encyclopedia of definite information. +He was so thorough that, when he became a Bell lawyer, he first spent +an entire summer at his country home in Petersham, studying the laws +of physics and electricity. He was never in the slightest degree +spectacular. Once only, during the eleven years of litigation, did +he lose control of his temper. He was attacking the credibility of a +witness whom he had put on the stand, but who had been tampered with by +the opposition lawyers. "But this man is your own witness," protested +the lawyers. "Yes," shouted the usually soft-speaking Storrow; "he WAS +my witness, but now he is YOUR LIAR." + +The efficiency of these two men was greatly increased by a third--Thomas +D. Lockwood, who was chosen by Vail in 1879 to establish a Patent +Department. Two years before, Lockwood had heard Bell lecture in +Chickering Hall, New York, and was a "doubting Thomas." But a closer +study of the telephone transformed him into an enthusiast. Having a +memory like a filing system, and a knack for invention, Lockwood was +well fitted to create such a department. He was a man born for the +place. And he has seen the number of electrical patents grow from a few +hundred in 1878 to eighty thousand in 1910. + +These three men were the defenders of the Bell patents. As Vail built up +the young telephone business, they held it from being torn to shreds +in an orgy of speculative competition. Smith prepared the comprehensive +plan of defence. By his sagacity and experience he was enabled to +mark out the general principles upon which Bell had a right to stand. +Usually, he closed the case, and he was immensely effective as he would +declaim, in his deep voice: "I submit, Your Honor, that the literature +of the world does not afford a passage which states how the human voice +can be electrically transmitted, previous to the patent of Mr. Bell." +His death, like his life, was dramatic. He was on his feet in the +courtroom, battling against an infringer, when, in the middle of +a sentence, he fell to the floor, overcome by sickness and the +responsibilities he had carried for twelve years. Storrow, in a +different way, was fully as indispensable as Smith. It was he who built +up the superstructure of the Bell defence. He was a master of details. +His brain was keen and incisive; and some of his briefs will be studied +as long as the art of telephony exists. He might fairly have been +compared, in action, to a rapid-firing Gatling gun; while Smith was a +hundred-ton cannon, and Lockwood was the maker of the ammunition. + +Smith and Storrow had three main arguments that never were, and never +could be, answered. Fifty or more of the most eminent lawyers of that +day tried to demolish these arguments, and failed. The first was +Bell's clear, straightforward story of HOW HE DID IT, which rebuked and +confounded the mob of pretenders. The second was the historical fact +that the most eminent electrical scientists of Europe and America +had seen Bell's telephone at the Centennial and had declared it to be +NEW--"not only new but marvellous," said Tyndall. And the third was +the very significant fact that no one challenged Bell's claim to be the +original inventor of the telephone until his patent was seventeen months +old. + +The patent itself, too, was a remarkable document. It was a Gibraltar of +security to the Bell Company. For eleven years it was attacked from all +sides, and never dented. It covered an entire art, yet it was sustained +during its whole lifetime. Printed in full, it would make ten pages of +this book; but the core of it is in the last sentence: "The method of, +and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically, +by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations +of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds." These words +expressed an idea that had never been written before. It could not be +evaded or overcome. There were only thirty-two words, but in six years +these words represented an investment of a million dollars apiece. + +Now that the clamor of this great patent war has died away, it is +evident that Bell received no more credit and no more reward than he +deserved. There was no telephone until he made one, and since he made +one, no one has found out any other way. Hundreds of clever men have +been trying for more than thirty years to outrival Bell, and yet every +telephone in the world is still made on the plan that Bell discovered. + +No inventor who preceded Bell did more, in the invention of the +telephone, than to help Bell indirectly, in the same way that Fra Mauro +and Toscanelli helped in the discovery of America by making the map and +chart that were used by Columbus. Bell was helped by his father, who +taught him the laws of acoustics; by Helmholtz, who taught him the +influence of magnets upon sound vibrations; by Koenig and Leon Scott, +who taught him the infinite variety of these vibrations; by Dr. Clarence +J. Blake, who gave him a human ear for his experiments; and by Joseph +Henry and Sir Charles Wheatstone, who encouraged him to persevere. In +a still more indirect way, he was helped by Morse's invention of +the telegraph; by Faraday's discovery of the phenomena of magnetic +induction; by Sturgeon's first electro-magnet; and by Volta's electric +battery. All that scientists had achieved, from Galileo and Newton to +Franklin and Simon Newcomb, helped Bell in a general way, by creating a +scientific atmosphere and habit of thought. But in the actual making of +the telephone, there was no one with Bell nor before him. He invented it +first, and alone. + + + +CHAPTER IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART + +Four wire-using businesses were already in the field when the telephone +was born: the fire-alarm, burglar-alarm, telegraph, and messenger-boy +service; and at first, as might have been expected, the humble little +telephone was huddled in with these businesses as a sort of poor +relation. To the general public, it was a mere scientific toy; but there +were a few men, not many, in these wire-stringing trades, who saw a +glimmering chance of creating a telephone business. They put telephones +on the wires that were then in use. As these became popular, they added +others. Each of their customers wished to be able to talk to every +one else. And so, having undertaken to give telephone service, they +presently found themselves battling with the most intricate and baffling +engineering problem of modern times--the construction around the +tele-phone of such a mechanism as would bring it into universal service. + +The first of these men was Thomas A. Watson, the young mechanic who had +been hired as Bell's helper. He began a work that to-day requires an +army of twenty-six thousand people. He was for a couple of years +the total engineering and manufacturing department of the telephone +business, and by 1880 had taken out sixty patents for his own +suggestions. It was Watson who took the telephone as Bell had made it, +really a toy, with its diaphragm so delicate that a warm breath would +put it out of order, and toughened it into a more rugged machine. Bell +had used a disc of fragile gold-beaters' skin with a patch of sheet-iron +glued to the centre. He could not believe, for a time, that a disc of +all-iron would vibrate under the slight influence of a spoken word. But +he and Watson noticed that when the patch was bigger the talking was +better, and presently they threw away the gold-beaters' skin and used +the iron alone. + +Also, it was Watson who spent months experimenting with all sorts and +sizes of iron discs, so as to get the one that would best convey the +sound. If the iron was too thick, he discovered, the voice was shrilled +into a Punch-and-Judy squeal; and if it was too thin, the voice became a +hollow and sepulchral groan, as if the speaker had his head in a barrel. +Other months, too, were spent in finding out the proper size and shape +for the air cavity in front of the disc. And so, after the telephone had +been perfected, IN PRINCIPLE, a full year was required to lift it out +of the class of scientific toys, and another year or two to present it +properly to the business world. + +Until 1878 all Bell telephone apparatus was made by Watson in Charles +Williams's little shop in Court Street, Boston--a building long since +transformed into a five-cent theatre. But the business soon grew too big +for the shop. Orders fell five weeks behind. Agents stormed and fretted. +Some action had to be taken quickly, so licenses were given to four +other manufacturers to make bells, switchboards, and so forth. By this +time the Western Electric Company of Chicago had begun to make the +infringing Gray-Edison telephones for the Western Union, so that there +were soon six groups of mechanics puzzling their wits over the new +talk-machinery. + +By 1880 there was plenty of telephonic apparatus being made, but in +too many different varieties. Not all the summer gowns of that year +presented more styles and fancies. The next step, if there was to be +any degree of uniformity, was plainly to buy and consolidate these six +companies; and by 1881 Vail had done this. It was the first merger in +telephone history. It was a step of immense importance. Had it not been +taken, the telephone business would have been torn into fragments by the +civil wars between rival inventors. + +From this time the Western Electric became the headquarters of +telephonic apparatus. It was the Big Shop, all roads led to it. No +matter where a new idea was born, sooner or later it came knocking at +the door of the Western Electric to receive a material body. Here were +the skilled workmen who became the hands of the telephone business. And +here, too, were many of the ablest inventors and engineers, who did most +to develop the cables and switchboards of to-day. + +In Boston, Watson had resigned in 1882, and in his place, a year or +two later stood a timely new arrival named E. T. Gilliland. This +really notable man was a friend in need to the telephone. He had been +a manufacturer of electrical apparatus in Indianapolis, until Vail's +policy of consolidation drew him into the central group of pioneers +and pathfinders. For five years Gilliland led the way as a developer +of better and cheaper equipment. He made the best of a most difficult +situation. He was so handy, so resourceful, that he invariably found a +way to unravel the mechanical tangles that perplexed the first telephone +agents, and this, too, without compelling them to spend large sums of +capital. He took the ideas and apparatus that were then in existence, +and used them to carry the telephone business through the most critical +period of its life, when there was little time or money to risk +on experiments. He took the peg switchboard of the telegraph, for +in-stance, and developed it to its highest point, to a point that was +not even imagined possible by any one else. It was the most practical +and complete switchboard of its day, and held the field against all +comers until it was superseded by the modern type of board, vastly more +elaborate and expensive. + +By 1884, gathered around Gilliland in Boston and the Western Electric +in Chicago, there came to be a group of mechanics and high-school +graduates, very young men, mostly, who had no reputations to lose; +and who, partly for a living and mainly for a lark, plunged into the +difficulties of this new business that had at that time little history +and less prestige. These young adventurers, most of whom are still +alive, became the makers of industrial history. They were unquestionably +the founders of the present science of telephone engineering. + +The problem that they dashed at so lightheartedly was much larger than +any of them imagined. It was a Gibraltar of impossibilities. It was on +the face of it a fantastic nightmare of a task--to weave such a web of +wires, with interlocking centres, as would put any one telephone in +touch with every other. There was no help for them in books or colleges. +Watson, who had acquired a little knowledge, had become a shipbuilder. +Electrical engineering, as a profession, was unborn. And as for their +telegraphic experience, while it certainly helped them for a time, it +started them in the wrong direction and led them to do many things which +had afterwards to be undone. + +The peculiar electric current that these young pathfinders had to deal +with is perhaps the quickest, feeblest, and most elusive force in +the world. It is so amazing a thing that any description of it seems +irrational. It is as gentle as a touch of a baby sunbeam, and as swift +as the lightning flash. It is so small that the electric current of a +single incandescent lamp is greater 500,000,000 times. Cool a spoonful +of hot water just one degree, and the energy set free by the cooling +will operate a telephone for ten thousand years. Catch the falling +tear-drop of a child, and there will be sufficient water-power to carry +a spoken message from one city to another. + +Such is the tiny Genie of the Wire that had to be protected and trained +into obedience. It was the most defenceless of all electric sprites, +and it had so many enemies. Enemies! The world was populous with its +enemies. There was the lightning, its elder brother, striking at it +with murderous blows. There were the telegraphic and light-and-power +currents, its strong and malicious cousins, chasing and assaulting it +whenever it ventured too near. There were rain and sleet and snow and +every sort of moisture, lying in wait to abduct it. There were rivers +and trees and flecks of dust. It seemed as if all the known and unknown +agencies of nature were in conspiracy to thwart or annihilate this +gentle little messenger who had been conjured into life by the wizardry +of Alexander Graham Bell. + +All that these young men had received from Bell and Watson was that part +of the telephone that we call the receiver. This was practically the +sum total of Bell's invention, and remains to-day as he made it. It was +then, and is yet, the most sensitive instrument that has ever been put +to general use in any country. It opened up a new world of sound. It +would echo the tramp of a fly that walked across a table, or repeat in +New Orleans the prattle of a child in New York. This was what the +young men received, and this was all. There were no switchboards of +any account, no cables of any value, no wires that were in any sense +adequate, no theory of tests or signals, no exchanges, NO TELEPHONE +SYSTEM OF ANY SORT WHATEVER. + +As for Bell's first telephone lines, they were as simple as +clothes-lines. Each short little wire stood by itself, with one +instrument at each end. There were no operators, switchboards, or +exchanges. But there had now come a time when more than two persons +wanted to be in the same conversational group. This was a larger use of +the telephone; and while Bell himself had foreseen it, he had not worked +out a plan whereby it could be carried out. Here was the new problem, +and a most stupendous one--how to link together three telephones, or +three hundred, or three thousand, or three million, so that any two of +them could be joined at a moment's notice. + +And that was not all. These young men had not only to battle against +mystery and "the powers of the air"; they had not only to protect their +tiny electric messenger, and to create a system of wire highways along +which he could run up and down safely; they had to do more. They had +to make this system so simple and fool-proof that every one--every one +except the deaf and dumb--could use it without any previous experience. +They had to educate Bell's Genie of the Wire so that he would not only +obey his masters, but anybody--anybody who could speak to him in any +language. + +No doubt, if the young men had stopped to consider their life-work as +a whole, some of them might have turned back. But they had no time to +philosophize. They were like the boy who learns how to swim by being +pushed into deep water. Once the telephone business was started, it had +to be kept going; and as it grew, there came one after another a series +of congestions. Two courses were open; either the business had to be +kept down to suit the apparatus, or the apparatus had to be developed to +keep pace with the business. The telephone men, most of them, at least, +chose development; and the brilliant inventions that afterwards made +some of them famous were compelled by sheer necessity and desperation. + +The first notable improvement upon Bell's invention was the making of +the transmitter, in 1877, by Emile Berliner. This, too, was a romance. +Berliner, as a poor German youth of nineteen, had landed in Castle +Garden in 1870 to seek his fortune. He got a job as "a sort of +bottle-washer at six dollars a week," he says, in a chemical shop in New +York. At nights he studied science in the free classes of Cooper Union. +Then a druggist named Engel gave him a copy of Muller's book on physics, +which was precisely the stimulus needed by his creative brain. In 1876 +he was fascinated by the telephone, and set out to construct one on a +different plan. Several months later he had succeeded and was overjoyed +to receive his first patent for a telephone transmitter. He had by this +time climbed up from his bottle-washing to be a clerk in a drygoods +store in Washington; but he was still poor and as unpractical as most +inventors. Joseph Henry, the Sage of the American scientific world, +was his friend, though too old to give him any help. Consequently, when +Edison, two weeks later, also invented a transmitter, the prior claim +of Berliner was for a time wholly ignored. Later the Bell Company +bought Berliner's patent and took up his side of the case. There was +a seemingly endless succession of delays--fourteen years of the most +vexatious delays--until finally the Supreme Court of the United States +ruled that Berliner, and not Edison, was the original inventor of the +transmitter. + +From first to last, the transmitter has been the product of several +minds. Its basic idea is the varying of the electric current by varying +the pressure between two points. Bell unquestionably suggested it in +his famous patent, when he wrote of "increasing and diminishing the +resistance." Berliner was the first actually to construct one. Edison +greatly improved it by using soft carbon instead of a steel point. A +Kentucky professor, David E. Hughes, started a new line of development +by adapting a Bell telephone into a "microphone," a fantastic little +instrument that would detect the noise made by a fly in walking across +a table. Francis Blake, of Boston, changed a microphone into a practical +transmitter. The Rev. Henry Hunnings, an English clergyman, hit upon the +happy idea of using carbon in the form of small granules. And one of the +Bell experts, named White, improved the Hunnings transmitter into its +present shape. Both transmitter and receiver seem now to be as complete +an artificial tongue and ear as human ingenuity can make them. They have +persistently grown more elaborate, until today a telephone set, as it +stands on a desk, contains as many as one hundred and thirty separate +pieces, as well as a saltspoonful of glistening granules of carbon. + +Next after the transmitter came the problem of the MYSTERIOUS NOISES. +This was, perhaps, the most weird and mystifying of all the telephone +problems. The fact was that the telephone had brought within hearing +distance a new wonder-world of sound. All wires at that time were +single, and ran into the earth at each end, making what was called a +"grounded circuit." And this connection with the earth, which is really +a big magnet, caused all manner of strange and uncouth noises on the +telephone wires. + +Noises! Such a jangle of meaningless noises had never been heard by +human ears. There were spluttering and bubbling, jerking and rasping, +whistling and screaming. There were the rustling of leaves, the croaking +of frogs, the hissing of steam, and the flapping of birds' wings. There +were clicks from telegraph wires, scraps of talk from other telephones, +and curious little squeals that were unlike any known sound. The lines +running east and west were noisier than the lines running north and +south. The night was noisier than the day, and at the ghostly hour of +midnight, for what strange reason no one knows, the babel was at its +height. Watson, who had a fanciful mind, suggested that perhaps these +sounds were signals from the inhabitants of Mars or some other sociable +planet. But the matter-of-fact young telephonists agreed to lay the +blame on "induction"--a hazy word which usually meant the natural +meddlesomeness of electricity. + +Whatever else the mysterious noises were, they were a nuisance. The poor +little telephone business was plagued almost out of its senses. It was +like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail. No matter where it went, it +was pursued by this unearthly clatter. "We were ashamed to present our +bills," said A. A. Adee, one of the first agents; "for no matter how +plainly a man talked into his telephone, his language was apt to sound +like Choctaw at the other end of the line." + +All manner of devices were solemnly tried to hush the wires, and each +one usually proved to be as futile as an incantation. What was to be +done? Step by step the telephone men were driven back. They were beaten. +There was no way to silence these noises. Reluctantly, they agreed +that the only way was to pull up the ends of each wire from the tainted +earth, and join them by a second wire. This was the "metallic circuit" +idea. It meant an appalling increase in the use of wire. It would compel +the rebuild-ing of the switchboards and the invention of new signal +systems. But it was inevitable; and in 1883, while the dispute about it +was in full blast, one of the young men quietly slipped it into use on +a new line between Boston and Providence. The effect was magical. "At +last," said the delighted manager, "we have a perfectly quiet line." + +This young man, a small, slim youth who was twenty-two years old +and looked younger, was no other than J. J. Carty, now the first of +telephone engineers and almost the creator of his profession. Three +years earlier he had timidly asked for a job as operator in the Boston +exchange, at five dollars a week, and had shown such an aptitude for the +work that he was soon made one of the captains. At thirty years of age +he became a central figure in the development of the art of telephony. + +What Carty has done is known by telephone men in all countries; but the +story of Carty himself--who he is, and why--is new. First of all, he is +Irish, pure Irish. His father had left Ireland as a boy in 1825. During +the Civil War his father made guns in the city of Cambridge, where young +John Joseph was born; and afterwards he made bells for church steeples. +He was instinctively a mechanic and proud of his calling. He could +tell the weight of a bell from the sound of it. Moses G. Farmer, the +electrical inventor, and Howe, the creator of the sewing-machine, were +his friends. + +At five years of age, little John J. Carty was taken by his father to +the shop where the bells were made, and he was profoundly impressed by +the magical strength of a big magnet, that picked up heavy weights as +though they were feathers. At the high school his favorite study +was physics; and for a time he and another boy named Rolfe--now a +distinguished man of science--carried on electrical experiments of +their own in the cellar of the Rolfe house. Here they had a "Tom +Thumb" telegraph, a telephone which they had ventured to improve, and a +hopeless tangle of wires. Whenever they could afford to buy more wires +and batteries, they went to a near-by store which supplied electrical +apparatus to the professors and students of Harvard. This store, with +its workshop in the rear, seemed to the two boys a veritable wonderland; +and when Carty, a youth of eighteen, was compelled to leave school +because of his bad eyesight, he ran at once and secured the glorious job +of being boy-of-all-work in this store of wonders. So, when he became an +operator in the Boston telephone exchange, a year later, he had already +developed to a remarkable degree his natural genius for telephony. + +Since then, Carty and the telephone business have grown up together, +he always a little distance in advance. No other man has touched the +apparatus of telephony at so many points. He fought down the flimsy, +clumsy methods, which led from one snarl to another. He found out how +to do with wires what Dickens did with words. "Let us do it right, boys, +and then we won't have any bad dreams"--this has been his motif. And, +as the crown and climax of his work, he mapped out the profession of +telephone engineering on the widest and most comprehensive lines. + +In Carty, the engineer evolved into the educator. His end of the +American Telephone and Telegraph Company became the University of the +Telephone. He was himself a student by disposition, with a special taste +for the writings of Faraday, the forerunner; Tyndall, the expounder; and +Spencer, the philosopher. And in 1890, he gathered around him a winnowed +group of college graduates--he has sixty of them on his staff to-day--so +that he might bequeath to the telephone an engineering corps of loyal +and efficient men. + +The next problem that faced the young men of the telephone, as soon +as they had escaped from the clamor of the mysterious noises, was the +necessity of taking down the wires in the city streets and putting them +underground. At first, they had strung the wires on poles and roof-tops. +They had done this, not because it was cheap, but because it was the +only possible way, so far as any one knew in that kindergarten period. +A telephone wire required the daintiest of handling. To bury it was to +smother it, to make it dull or perhaps entirely useless. But now +that the number of wires had swollen from hundreds to thousands, the +overhead method had been outgrown. Some streets in the larger cities had +become black with wires. Poles had risen to fifty feet in height, then +sixty--seventy--eighty. Finally the highest of all pole lines was built +along West Street, New York--every pole a towering Norway pine, with its +top ninety feet above the roadway, and carrying thirty cross-arms and +three hundred wires. + +From poles the wires soon overflowed to housetops, until in New York +alone they had overspread eleven thousand roofs. These roofs had to be +kept in repair, and their chimneys were the deadly enemies of the iron +wires. Many a wire, in less than two or three years, was withered to the +merest shred of rust. As if these troubles were not enough, there were +the storms of winter, which might wipe out a year's revenue in a single +day. The sleet storms were the worst. Wires were weighted down with ice, +often three pounds of ice per foot of wire. And so, what with sleet, and +corrosion, and the cost of roof-repairing, and the lack of room for +more wires, the telephone men were between the devil and the deep +sea--between the urgent necessity of burying their wires, and the +inexorable fact that they did not know how to do it. + +Fortunately, by the time that this problem arrived, the telephone +business was fairly well established. It had outgrown its early days +of ridicule and incredulity. It was paying wages and salaries and +even dividends. Evidently it had arrived on the scene in the nick of +time--after the telegraph and before the trolleys and electric lights. +Had it been born ten years later, it might not have been able to +survive. So delicate a thing as a baby telephone could scarcely have +protected itself against the powerful currents of electricity that came +into general use in 1886, if it had not first found out a way of hiding +safely underground. + +The first declaration in favor of an underground system was made by the +Boston company in 1880. "It may be expedient to place our entire system +underground," said the sorely perplexed manager, "whenever a practicable +method is found of accomplishing: it." All manner of theories were +afloat but Theodore N. Vail, who was usually the man of constructive +imagination in emergencies, began in 1882 a series of actual experiments +at Attleborough, Massachusetts, to find out exactly what could, and what +could not, be done with wires that were buried in the earth. + +A five-mile trench was dug beside a railway track. The work was done +handily and cheaply by the labor-saving plan of hitching a locomotive to +a plough. Five ploughs were jerked apart before the work was finished. +Then, into this trench were laid wires with every known sort of +covering. Most of them, naturally, were wrapped with rubber or +gutta-percha, after the fashion of a submarine cable. When all were in +place, the willing locomotive was harnessed to a huge wooden drag, which +threw the ploughed soil back into the trench and covered the wires a +foot deep. It was the most professional cable-laying that any one at +that time could do, and it succeeded, not brilliantly, but well enough +to encourage the telephone engineers to go ahead. + +Several weeks later, the first two cables for actual use were laid in +Boston and Brooklyn; and in 1883 Engineer J. P. Davis was set to grapple +with the Herculean labor of putting a complete underground system in the +wire-bound city of New York. This he did in spite of a bombardment of +explosions from leaky gas-pipes, and with a woeful lack of experts and +standard materials. All manner of makeshifts had to be tried in place of +tile ducts, which were not known in 1883. Iron pipe was used at first, +then asphalt, concrete, boxes of sand and creosoted wood. As for the +wires, they were first wrapped in cotton, and then twisted into cables, +usually of a hundred wires each. And to prevent the least taint of +moisture, which means sudden death to a telephone current, these cables +were invariably soaked in oil. + +This oil-filled type of cable carried the telephone business safely +through half a dozen years. But it was not the final type. It was +preliminary only, the best that could be made at that time. Not one +is in use to-day. In 1888 Theodore Vail set on foot a second series of +experiments, to see if a cable could be made that was better suited as +a highway for the delicate electric currents of the telephone. A young +engineer named John A. Barrett, who had already made his mark as an +expert, by finding a way to twist and transpose the wires, was set apart +to tackle this problem. Being an economical Vermonter, Barrett went to +work in a little wooden shed in the backyard of a Brooklyn foundry. In +this foundry he had seen a unique machine that could be made to mould +hot lead around a rope of twisted wires. This was a notable discovery. +It meant TIGHT COVERINGS. It meant a victory over that most troublesome +of enemies--moisture. Also, it meant that cables could henceforth be +made longer, with fewer sleeves and splices, and without the oil, which +had always been an unmitigated nuisance. + +Next, having made the cable tight, Barrett set out to produce it more +cheaply and by accident stumbled upon a way to make it immensely more +efficient. All wires were at that time wrapped with cotton, and his plan +was to find some less costly material that would serve the same purpose. +One of his workmen, a Virginian, suggested the use of paper twine, which +had been used in the South during the Civil War, when cotton was scarce +and expensive. Barrett at once searched the South for paper twine and +found it. He bought a barrel of it from a small factory in Richmond, but +after a trial it proved to be too flimsy. If such paper could be put +on flat, he reasoned, it would be stronger. Just then he heard of an +erratic genius who had an invention for winding paper tape on wire for +the use of milliners. + +Paper-wound bonnet-wire! Who could imagine any connection between this +and the telephone? Yet this hint was exactly what Barrett needed. He +experimented until he had devised a machine that crumpled the paper +around the wire, instead of winding it tightly. This was the finishing +touch. For a time these paper-wound cables were soaked in oil, but in +1890 Engineer F. A. Pickernell dared to trust to the tightness of the +lead sheathing, and laid a "dry core" cable, the first of the modern +type, in one of the streets of Philadelphia. This cable was the event +of the year. It was not only cheaper. It was the best-talking cable that +had ever been harnessed to a telephone. + +What Barrett had done was soon made clear. By wrapping the wire with +loose paper, he had in reality cushioned it with AIR, which is the +best possible insulator. Not the paper, but the air in the paper, had +improved the cable. More air was added by the omission of the oil. And +presently Barrett perceived that he had merely reproduced in a cable, +as far as possible, the conditions of the overhead wires, which are +separated by nothing but air. + +By 1896 there were two hundred thousand miles of wire snugly wrapped in +paper and lying in leaden caskets beneath the streets of the cities, and +to-day there are six million miles of it owned by the affiliated Bell +companies. Instead of blackening the streets, the wire nerves of the +telephone are now out of sight under the roadway, and twining into the +basements of buildings like a new sort of metallic ivy. Some cables are +so large that a single spool of cable will weigh twenty-six tons +and require a giant truck and a sixteen-horse team to haul it to its +resting-place. As many as twelve hundred wires are often bunched into +one sheath, and each cable lies loosely in a little duct of its own. +It is reached by manholes where it runs under the streets and in little +switching-boxes placed at intervals it is frayed out into separate pairs +of wires that blossom at length into telephones. + +Out in the open country there are still the open wires, which in point +of talking are the best. In the suburbs of cities there are neat green +posts with a single gray cable hung from a heavy wire. Usually, a +telephone pole is made from a sixty-year-old tree, a cedar, chestnut, +or juniper. It lasts twelve years only, so that the one item of poles is +still costing the telephone companies several millions a year. The +total number of poles now in the United States, used by telephone and +telegraph companies, once covered an area, before they were cut down, as +large as the State of Rhode Island. + +But the highest triumph of wire-laying came when New York swept into the +Skyscraper Age, and when hundreds of tall buildings, as high as the fall +of the waters of Niagara, grew up like a range of magical cliffs upon +the precious rock of Manhattan. Here the work of the telephone engineer +has been so well done that although every room in these cliff-buildings +has its telephone, there is not a pole in sight, not a cross-arm, not +a wire. Nothing but the tip-ends of an immense system are visible. No +sooner is a new skyscraper walled and roofed, than the telephones are +in place, at once putting the tenants in touch with the rest of the +city and the greater part of the United States. In a single one of these +monstrous buildings, the Hudson Terminal, there is a cable that runs +from basement to roof and ravels out to reach three thousand desks. +This mighty geyser of wires is fifty tons in weight and would, if +straightened out into a single line, connect New York with Chicago. Yet +it is as invisible as the nerves and muscles of a human body. + +During this evolution of the cable, even the wire itself was being +remade. Vail and others had noticed that of all the varieties of wire +that were for sale, not one was exactly suitable for a telephone system. +The first telephone wire was of galvanized iron, which had at least the +primitive virtue of being cheap. Then came steel wire, stronger but +less durable. But these wires were noisy and not good conductors of +electricity. An ideal telephone wire, they found, must be made of either +silver or copper. Silver was out of the question, and copper wire was +too soft and weak. It would not carry its own weight. + +The problem, therefore, was either to make steel wire a better +conductor, or to produce a copper wire that would be strong enough. Vail +chose the latter, and forthwith gave orders to a Bridgeport manufacturer +to begin experiments. A young expert named Thomas B. Doolittle was at +once set to work, and presently appeared the first hard-drawn copper +wire, made tough-skinned by a fairly simple process. Vail bought thirty +pounds of it and scattered it in various parts of the United States, +to note the effect upon it of different climates. One length of it may +still be seen at the Vail homestead in Lyndonville, Vermont. Then this +hard-drawn wire was put to a severe test by being strung between Boston +and New York. This line was a brilliant success, and the new wire was +hailed with great delight as the ideal servant of the telephone. + +Since then there has been little trouble with copper wire, except +its price. It was four times as good as iron wire, and four times as +expensive. Every mile of it, doubled, weighed two hundred pounds and +cost thirty dollars. On the long lines, where it had to be as thick as +a lead pencil, the expense seemed to be ruinously great. When the first +pair of wires was strung between New York and Chicago, for instance, +it was found to weigh 870,000 pounds--a full load for a twenty-two-car +freight train; and the cost of the bare metal was $130,000. So enormous +has been the use of copper wire since then by the telephone companies, +that fully one-fourth of all the capital invested in the telephone has +gone to the owners of the copper mines. + +For several years the brains of the telephone men were focussed upon +this problem--how to reduce the expenditure on copper. One uncanny +device, which would seem to be a mere inventor's fantasy if it had not +already saved the telephone companies four million dollars or more, is +known as the "phantom circuit." It enables three messages to run at the +same time, where only two ran before. A double track of wires is made +to carry three talk-trains running abreast, a feat made possible by the +whimsical disposition of electricity, and which is utterly inconceivable +in railroading. This invention, which is the nearest approach as yet to +multiple telephony, was conceived by Jacobs in England and Carty in the +United States. + +But the most copper money has been saved--literally tens of millions of +dollars--by persuading thin wires to work as efficiently as thick ones. +This has been done by making better transmitters, by insulating the +smaller wires with enamel instead of silk, and by placing coils of a +certain nature at intervals upon the wires. The invention of this last +device startled the telephone men like a flash of lightning out of a +blue sky. It came from outside--from the quiet laboratory of a Columbia +professor who had arrived in the United States as a young Hungarian +immigrant not many years earlier. From this professor, Michael J. +Pupin, came the idea of "loading" a telephone line, in such a way as to +reinforce the electric current. It enabled a thin wire to carry as far +as a thick one, and thus saved as much as forty dollars a wire per mile. +As a reward for his cleverness, a shower of gold fell upon Pupin, and +made him in an instant as rich as one of the grand-dukes of his native +land. + +It is now a most highly skilled occupation, supporting fully fifteen +thousand families, to put the telephone wires in place and protect them +against innumerable dangers. This is the profession of the wire chiefs +and their men, a corps of human spiders, endlessly spinning threads +under streets and above green fields, on the beds of rivers and the +slopes of mountains, massing them in cities and fluffing them out among +farms and villages. To tell the doings of a wire chief, in the course +of his ordinary week's work, would in itself make a lively book +of adventures. Even a washerwoman, with one lone, non-electrical +clothes-line of a hundred yards to operate, has often enough trouble +with it. But the wire chiefs of the Bell telephone have charge of as +much wire as would make TWO HUNDRED MILLION CLOTHES-LINES--ten apiece +to every family in the United States; and these lines are not punctuated +with clothespins, but with the most delicate of electrical instruments. + +The wire chiefs must detect trouble under a thousand disguises. Perhaps +a small boy has thrown a snake across the wires or driven a nail into +a cable. Perhaps some self-reliant citizen has moved his own telephone +from one room to another. Perhaps a sudden rainstorm has splashed its +fatal moisture upon an unwiped joint. Or perhaps a submarine cable has +been sat upon by the Lusitania and flattened to death. But no matter +what the trouble, a telephone system cannot be stopped for repairs. +It cannot be picked up and put into a dry-dock. It must be repaired +or improved by a sort of vivisection while it is working. It is an +interlocking unit, a living, conscious being, half human and half +machine; and an injury in any one place may cause a pain or sickness to +its whole vast body. + +And just as the particles of a human body change every six or seven +years, without disturb-ing the body, so the particles of our telephone +systems have changed repeatedly without any interruption of traffic. +The constant flood of new inventions has necessitated several complete +rebuildings. Little or nothing has ever been allowed to wear out. The +New York system was rebuilt three times in sixteen years; and many a +costly switchboard has gone to the scrap-heap at three or four years of +age. What with repairs and inventions and new construction, the various +Bell companies have spent at least $425,000,000 in the first ten years +of the twentieth century, without hindering for a day the ceaseless +torrent of electrical conversation. + +The crowning glory of a telephone system of to-day is not so much the +simple telephone itself, nor the maze and mileage of its cables, but +rather the wonderful mechanism of the Switchboard. This is the part that +will always remain mysterious to the public. It is seldom seen, and it +remains as great a mystery to those who have seen it as to those who +have not. Explanations of it are futile. As well might any one expect to +learn Sanscrit in half an hour as to understand a switchboard by making +a tour of investigation around it. It is not like anything else +that either man or Nature has ever made. It defies all metaphors +and comparisons. It cannot be shown by photography, not even in +moving-pictures, because so much of it is concealed inside its wooden +body. And few people, if any, are initiated into its inner mysteries +except those who belong to its own cortege of inventors and attendants. + +A telephone switchboard is a pyramid of inventions. If it is full-grown, +it may have two million parts. It may be lit with fifteen thousand tiny +electric lamps and nerved with as much wire as would reach from New York +to Berlin. It may cost as much as a thousand pianos or as much as three +square miles of farms in Indiana. The ten thousand wire hairs of its +head are not only numbered, but enswathed in silk, and combed out in so +marvellous a way that any one of them can in a flash be linked to any +other. Such hair-dressing! Such puffs and braids and ringlet relays! +Whoever would learn the utmost that may be done with copper hairs +of Titian red, must study the fantastic coiffure of a telephone +Switchboard. + +If there were no switchboard, there would still be telephones, but not a +telephone system. To connect five thousand people by telephone requires +five thousand wires when the wires run to a switchboard; but without +a switchboard there would have to be 12,497,500 wires--4,999 to every +telephone. As well might there be a nerve-system without a brain, as a +telephone system without a switchboard. If there had been at first +two separate companies, one owning the telephone and the other the +switchboard, neither could have done the business. + +Several years before the telephone got a switchboard of its own, it made +use of the boards that had been designed for the telegraph. These were +as simple as wheelbarrows, and became absurdly inadequate as soon as +the telephone business began to grow. Then there came adaptations by the +dozen. Every telephone manager became by compulsion an inventor. There +was no source of information and each exchange did the best it could. +Hundreds of patents were taken out. And by 1884 there had come to be a +fairly definite idea of what a telephone switchboard ought to be. + +The one man who did most to create the switchboard, who has been its +devotee for more than thirty years, is a certain modest and little known +inventor, still alive and busy, named Charles E. Scribner. Of the nine +thousand switchboard patents, Scribner holds six hundred or more. Ever +since 1878, when he devised the first "jackknife switch," Scribner has +been the wizard of the switchboard. It was he who saw most clearly its +requirements. Hundreds of others have helped, but Scribner was the one +man who persevered, who never asked for an easier job, and who in the +end became the master of his craft. + +It may go far to explain the peculiar genius of Scribner to say that he +was born in 1858, in the year of the laying of the Atlantic Cable; and +that his mother was at the time profoundly interested in the work and +anxious for its success. His father was a judge in Toledo; but young +Scribner showed no aptitude for the tangles of the law. He preferred the +tangles of wire and system in miniature, which he and several other boys +had built and learned to operate. These boys had a benefactor in an old +bachelor named Thomas Bond. He had no special interest in telegraphy. +He was a dealer in hides. But he was attracted by the cleverness of the +boys and gave them money to buy more wires and more batteries. One day +he noticed an invention of young Scribner's--a telegraph repeater. + +"This may make your fortune," he said, "but no mechanic in Toledo +can make a proper model of it for you. You must go to Chicago, where +telegraphic apparatus is made." The boy gladly took his advice and went +to the Western Electric factory in Chicago. Here he accidentally met +Enos M. Barton, the head of the factory. Barton noted that the boy was a +genius and offered him a job, which he accepted and has held ever +since. Such is the story of the entrance of Charles E. Scribner into the +telephone business, where he has been well-nigh indispensable. + +His monumental work has been the development of the MULTIPLE +Switchboard, a much more brain-twisting problem than the building of +the Pyramids or the digging of the Panama Canal. The earlier types of +switchboard had become too cumbersome by 1885. They were well enough for +five hundred wires but not for five thousand. In some exchanges as many +as half a dozen operators were necessary to handle a single call; and +the clamor and confusion were becoming unbearable. Some handier and +quieter way had to be devised, and thus arose the Multiple board. The +first crude idea of such a way had sprung to life in the brain of a +Chicago man named L. B. Firman, in 1879; but he became a farmer and +forsook his invention in its infancy. + +In the Multiple board, as it grew up under the hands of Scribner, +the outgoing wires are duplicated so as to be within reach of every +operator. A local call can thus be answered at once by the operator who +receives it; and any operator who is overwhelmed by a sudden rush of +business can be helped by her companions. Every wire that comes into the +board is tasselled out into many ends, and by means of a "busy test," +invented by Scribner, only one of these ends can be put into use at a +time. The normal limit of such a board is ten thousand wires, and will +always remain so, unless a race of long-armed giantesses should appear, +who would be able to reach over a greater expanse of board. At present, +a business of more than ten thousand lines means a second exchange. + +The Multiple board was enormously expensive. It grew more and more +elaborate until it cost one-third of a million dollars. The telephone +men racked their brains to produce something cheaper to take its place, +and they failed. The Multiple boards swallowed up capital as a desert +swallows water, but THEY SAVED TEN SECONDS ON EVERY CALL. This was an +unanswerable argument in their favor, and by 1887 twenty-one of them +were in use. + +Since then, the switchboard has had three or four rebuildings. There has +seemed to be no limit to the demands of the public or the fertility +of Scribner's brain. Persistent changes were made in the system of +signalling. The first signal, used by Bell and Watson, was a tap on the +diaphragm with the finger-nail. Soon after-wards came a "buzzer," and +then the magneto-electric bell. In 1887 Joseph O'Connell, of Chicago, +conceived of the use of tiny electric lights as signals, a brilliant +idea, as an electric light makes no noise and can be seen either by +night or by day. In 1901, J. J. Carty invented the "bridging bell," a +way to put four houses on a single wire, with a different signal for +each house. This idea made the "party line" practicable, and at once +created a boom in the use of the telephone by enterprising farmers. + +In 1896 there came a most revolutionary change in switchboards. All +things were made new. Instead of individual batteries, one at each +telephone, a large common battery was installed in the exchange itself. +This meant better signalling and better talking. It reduced the cost of +batteries and put them in charge of experts. It established uniformity. +It introduced the federal idea into the mechanism of a telephone system. +Best of all, it saved FOUR SECONDS ON EVERY CALL. The first of these +centralizing switchboards was put in place at Philadelphia; and other +cities followed suit as fast as they could afford the expense of +rebuilding. Since then, there have come some switchboards that are +wholly automatic. Few of these have been put into use, for the reason +that a switchboard, like a human body, must be semi-automatic only. To +give the most efficient service, there will always need to be an expert +to stand between it and the public. + +As the final result of all these varying changes in switchboards and +signals and batteries, there grew up the modern Telephone Exchange. This +is the solar plexus of the telephone body. It is the vital spot. It +is the home of the switchboard. It is not any one's invention, as the +telephone was. It is a growing mechanism that is not yet finished, and +may never be; but it has already evolved far enough to be one of the +wonders of the electrical world. There is probably no other part of +an American city's equipment that is as sensitive and efficient as a +telephone exchange. + +The idea of the exchange is somewhat older than the idea of the +telephone itself. There were communication exchanges before the +invention of the telephone. Thomas B. Doolittle had one in Bridgeport, +using telegraph instruments Thomas B. A. David had one in Pittsburg, +using printing-telegraph machines, which required little skill to +operate. And William A. Childs had a third, for lawyers only, in New +York, which used dials at first and afterwards printing machines. These +little exchanges had set out to do the work that is done to-day by +the telephone, and they did it after a fashion, in a most crude and +expensive way. They helped to prepare the way for the telephone, by +building up small constituencies that were ready for the telephone when +it arrived. + +Bell himself was perhaps the first to see the future of the telephone +exchange. In a letter written to some English capitalists in 1878, he +said: "It is possible to connect every man's house, office or factory +with a central station, so as to give him direct communication with his +neighbors.... It is conceivable that cables of telephone wires could be +laid underground, or suspended overhead, connecting by branch wires with +private dwellings, shops, etc., and uniting them through the main cable +with a central office." This remarkable prophecy has now become stale +reading, as stale as Darwin's "Origin of Species," or Adam Smith's +"Wealth of Nations." But at the time that it was written it was a most +fanciful dream. + +When the first infant exchange for telephone service was born in Boston, +in 1877, it was the tiny offspring of a burglar-alarm business operated +by E. T. Holmes, a young man whose father had originated the idea of +protecting property by electric wires in 1858. Holmes was the first +practical man who dared to offer telephone service for sale. He had +obtained two telephones, numbers six and seven, the first five +having gone to the junk-heap; and he attached these to a wire in his +burglar-alarm office. For two weeks his business friends played with the +telephones, like boys with a fascinating toy; then Holmes nailed up a +new shelf in his office, and on this shelf placed six box-telephones in +a row. These could be switched into connection with the burglar-alarm +wires and any two of the six wires could be joined by a wire cord. +Nothing could have been simpler, but it was the arrival of a new idea in +the business world. + +The Holmes exchange was on the top floor of a little building, and +in almost every other city the first exchange was as near the roof as +possible, partly to save rent and partly because most of the wires were +strung on roof-tops. As the telephone itself had been born in a cellar, +so the exchange was born in a garret. Usually, too, each exchange was +an off-shoot of some other wire-using business. It was a medley of +makeshifts. Almost every part of its outfit had been made for other +uses. In Chicago all calls came in to one boy, who bawled them up a +speaking-tube to the operators. In another city a boy received the +calls, wrote them on white alleys, and rolled them to the boys at the +switchboard. There was no number system. Every one was called by name. +Even as late as 1880, when New York boasted fifteen hundred telephones, +names were still in use. And as the first telephones were used both as +transmitters and receivers, there was usually posted up a rule that was +highly important: "Don't Talk with your Ear or Listen with your Mouth." + +To describe one of those early telephone exchanges in the silence of +a printed page is a wholly impossible thing. Nothing but a language +of noise could convey the proper impression. An editor who visited the +Chicago exchange in 1879 said of it: "The racket is almost deafening. +Boys are rushing madly hither and thither, while others are putting in +or taking out pegs from a central framework as if they were lunatics +engaged in a game of fox and geese." In the same year E. J. Hall wrote +from Buffalo that his exchange with twelve boys had become "a perfect +Bedlam." By the clumsy methods of those days, from two to six boys were +needed to handle each call. And as there was usually more or less of +a cat-and-dog squabble between the boys and the public, with every one +yelling at the top of his voice, it may be imagined that a telephone +exchange was a loud and frantic place. + +Boys, as operators, proved to be most complete and consistent failures. +Their sins of omission and commission would fill a book. What with +whittling the switchboards, swearing at subscribers, playing tricks with +the wires, and roaring on all occasions like young bulls of Bashan, +the boys in the first exchanges did their full share in adding to the +troubles of the business. Nothing could be done with them. They were +immune to all schemes of discipline. Like the MYSTERIOUS NOISES they +could not be controlled, and by general consent they were abolished. +In place of the noisy and obstreperous boy came the docile, soft-voiced +girl. + +If ever the rush of women into the business world was an unmixed +blessing, it was when the boys of the telephone exchanges were +superseded by girls. Here at its best was shown the influence of the +feminine touch. The quiet voice, pitched high, the deft fingers, the +patient courtesy and attentiveness--these qualities were precisely what +the gentle telephone required in its attendants. Girls were easier to +train; they did not waste time in retaliatory conversation; they were +more careful; and they were much more likely to give "the soft answer +that turneth away wrath." + +A telephone call under the boy regime meant Bedlam and five minutes; +afterwards, under the girl regime, it meant silence and twenty seconds. +Instead of the incessant tangle and tumult, there came a new species of +exchange--a quiet, tense place, in which several score of young ladies +sit and answer the language of the switchboard lights. Now and then, +not often, the signal lamps flash too quickly for these expert phonists. +During the panic of 1907 there was one mad hour when almost every +telephone in Wall Street region was being rung up by some desperate +speculator. The switchboards were ablaze with lights. A few girls lost +their heads. One fainted and was carried to the rest-room. But the +others flung the flying shuttles of talk until, in a single exchange +fifteen thousand conversations had been made possible in sixty minutes. +There are always girls in reserve for such explosive occasions, and when +the hands of any operator are seen to tremble, and she has a warning +red spot on each cheek, she is taken off and given a recess until she +recovers her poise. + +These telephone girls are the human part of a great communication +machine. They are weaving a web of talk that changes into a new pattern +every minute. How many possible combinations there are with the five +million telephones of the Bell System, or what unthinkable mileage of +conversation, no one has ever dared to guess. But whoever has once +seen the long line of white arms waving back and forth in front of the +switchboard lights must feel that he has looked upon the very pulse of +the city's life. + +In 1902 the New York Telephone Company started a school, the first of +its kind in the world, for the education of these telephone girls. This +school is hidden amid ranges of skyscrapers, but seventeen thousand +girls discover it in the course of the year. It is a most particular and +exclusive school. It accepts fewer than two thousand of these girls, and +rejects over fifteen thousand. Not more than one girl in every eight can +measure up to its standards; and it cheerfully refuses as many students +in a year as would make three Yales or Harvards. + +This school is unique, too, in the fact that it charges no fees, pays +every student five dollars a week, and then provides her with a job when +she graduates. But it demands that every girl shall be in good health, +quick-handed, clear-voiced, and with a certain poise and alertness of +manner. Presence of mind, which, in Herbert Spencer's opinion, ought +to be taught in every university, is in various ways drilled into the +temperament of the telephone girl. She is also taught the knack of +concentration, so that she may carry the switchboard situation in her +head, as a chess-player carries in his head the arrangement of the +chess-men. And she is much more welcome at this strange school if she +is young and has never worked in other trades, where less speed and +vigilance are required. + +No matter how many millions of dollars may be spent upon cables and +switchboards, the quality of telephone service depends upon the girl at +the exchange end of the wire. It is she who meets the public at every +point. She is the despatcher of all the talk trains; she is the ruler +of the wire highways; and she is expected to give every passenger-voice +an instantaneous express to its destination. More is demanded from her +than from any other servant of the public. Her clients refuse to stand +in line and quietly wait their turn, as they are quite willing to do in +stores and theatres and barber shops and railway stations and everywhere +else. They do not see her at work and they do not know what her work is. +They do not notice that she answers a call in an average time of three +and a half seconds. They are in a hurry, or they would not be at the +telephone; and each second is a minute long. Any delay is a direct +personal affront that makes a vivid impression upon their minds. And +they are not apt to remember that most of the delays and blunders are +being made, not by the expert girls, but by the careless people who +persist in calling wrong numbers and in ignoring the niceties of +telephone etiquette. + +The truth about the American telephone girl is that she has become so +highly efficient that we now expect her to be a paragon of perfection. +To give the young lady her due, we must acknowledge that she has done +more than any other person to introduce courtesy into the business +world. She has done most to abolish the old-time roughness and +vulgarity. She has made big business to run more smoothly than little +business did, half a century ago. She has shown us how to take the +friction out of conversation, and taught us refinements of politeness +which were rare even among the Beau Brummels of pre-telephonic days. +Who, for instance, until the arrival of the telephone girl, appreciated +the difference between "Who are you?" and "Who is this?" Or who else has +so impressed upon us the value of the rising inflection, as a gentler +habit of speech? This propaganda of politeness has gone so far that +to-day the man who is profane or abusive at the telephone, is cut +off from the use of it. He is cast out as unfit for a telephone-using +community. + +And now, so that there shall be no anticlimax in this story of telephone +development, we must turn the spot-light upon that immense aggregation +of workshops in which have been made three-fifths of the telephone +apparatus of the world--the Western Electric. The mother factory of this +globe-trotting business is the biggest thing in the spacious +back-yard of Chicago, and there are eleven smaller factories--her +children--scattered over the earth from New York to Tokio. To put its +totals into a sentence, it is an enterprise of 26,000-man-power, and +40,000,000-dollar-power; and the telephonic goods that it produces in +half a day are worth one hundred thousand dollars--as much, by the way, +as the Western Union REFUSED to pay for the Bell patents in 1877. + +The Western Electric was born in Chicago, in the ashes of the big fire +of 1871; and it has grown up to its present greatness quietly, without +celebrating its birthdays. At first it had no telephones to make. None +had been invented, so it made telegraphic apparatus, burglar-alarms, +electric pens, and other such things. But in 1878, when the Western +Union made its short-lived attempt to compete with the Bell Company, the +Western Electric agreed to make its telephones. Three years later, when +the brief spasm of competition was ended, the Western Electric was +taken in hand by the Bell people and has since then remained the great +workshop of the telephone. + +The main plant in Chicago is not especially remarkable from a +manufacturing point of view. Here are the inevitable lumber-yards and +foundries and machine-shops. Here is the mad waltz of the spindles that +whirl silk and cotton threads around the copper wires, very similar to +what may be seen in any braid factory. Here electric lamps are made, +five thousand of them in a day, in the same manner as elsewhere, except +that here they are so small and dainty as to seem designed for fairy +palaces. + +The things that are done with wire in the Western Electric factories are +too many for any mere outsider to remember. Some wire is wrapped with +paper tape at a speed of nine thousand miles a day. Some is fashioned +into fantastic shapes that look like absurd sea-monsters, but which in +reality are only the nerve systems of switchboards. And some is twisted +into cables by means of a dozen whirling drums--a dizzying sight, as +each pair of drums revolve in opposite directions. Because of the fact +that a cable's inevitable enemy is moisture, each cable is wound on an +immense spool and rolled into an oven until it is as dry as a cinder. +Then it is put into a strait-jacket of lead pipe, sealed at both ends, +and trundled into a waiting freight car. + +No other company uses so much wire and hard rubber, or so many tons of +brass rods, as the Western Electric. Of platinum, too, which is more +expensive than gold, it uses one thousand pounds a year in the making +of telephone transmitters. This is imported from the Ural Mountains. +The silk thread comes from Italy and Japan; the iron for magnets, from +Norway; the paper tape, from Manila; the mahogany, from South America; +and the rubber, from Brazil and the valley of the Congo. At least seven +countries must cooperate to make a telephone message possible. + +Perhaps the most extraordinary feature in the Western Electric factories +is the multitude of its inspectors. No other sort of manufacturing, not +even a Government navy-yard, has so many. Nothing is too small to escape +these sleuths of inspection. They test every tiny disc of mica, and +throw away nine out of ten. They test every telephone by actual talk, +set up every switchboard, and try out every cable. A single transmitter, +by the time it is completed, has had to pass three hundred examinations; +and a single coin-box is obliged to count ten thousand nickels before it +graduates into the outer world. Seven hundred inspectors are on guard in +the two main plants at Chicago and New York. This is a ruinously large +number, from a profit-making point of view; but the inexorable fact is +that in a telephone system nothing is insignificant. It is built on such +altruistic lines that an injury to any one part is the concern of all. + +As usual, when we probe into the history of a business that has grown +great and overspread the earth, we find a Man; and the Western Electric +is no exception to this rule. Its Man, still fairly hale and busy after +forty years of leadership, is Enos M. Barton. His career is the typical +American story of self-help. He was a telegraph messenger boy in New +York during the Civil War, then a telegraph operator in Cleveland. In +1869 his salary was cut down from one hundred dollars a month to ninety +dollars; whereupon he walked out and founded the Western Electric in a +shabby little machine-shop. Later he moved to Chicago, took in Elisha +Gray as his partner, and built up a trade in the making of telegraphic +materials. + +When the telephone was invented, Barton was one of the sceptics. "I well +remember my disgust," he said, "when some one told me it was possible to +send conversation along a wire." Several months later he saw a telephone +and at once became one of its apostles. By 1882 his plant had become +the official workshop of the Bell Companies. It was the headquarters of +invention and manufacturing. Here was gathered a notable group of young +men, brilliant and adventurous, who dared to stake their futures on the +success of the telephone. And always at their head was Barton, as a sort +of human switchboard, who linked them all together and kept them busy. + +In appearance, Enos M. Barton closely resembles ex-President Eliot, +of Harvard. He is slow in speech, simple in manner, and with a rare +sagacity in business affairs. He was not an organizer, in the modern +sense. His policy was to pick out a man, put him in a responsible +place, and judge him by results. Engineers could become bookkeepers, +and bookkeepers could become engineers. Such a plan worked well in the +earlier days, when the art of telephony was in the making, and when +there was no source of authority on telephonic problems. Barton is the +bishop emeritus of the Western Electric to-day; and the big industry +is now being run by a group of young hustlers, with H. B. Thayer at the +head of the table. Thayer is a Vermonter who has climbed the ladder +of experience from its lower rungs to the top. He is a typical +Yankee--lean, shrewd, tireless, and with a cold-blooded sense of justice +that fits him for the leadership of twenty-six thousand people. + +So, as we have seen, the telephone as Bell invented it, was merely a +brilliant beginning in the development of the art of telephony. It was +an elfin birth--an elusive and delicate sprite that had to be nurtured +into maturity. It was like a soul, for which a body had to be created; +and no one knew how to make such a body. Had it been born in some less +energetic country, it might have remained feeble and undeveloped; but +not in the United States. Here in one year it had become famous, and +in three years it had become rich. Bell's invincible patent was soon +buttressed by hundreds of others. An open-door policy was adopted for +invention. Change followed change to such a degree that the experts of +1880 would be lost to-day in the mazes of a telephone exchange. + +The art of the telephone engineer has in thirty years grown from the +most crude and clumsy of experiments into an exact and comprehensive +profession. As Carty has aptly said, "At first we invariably approached +every problem from the wrong end. If we had been told to load a herd of +cattle on a steamer, our method would have been to hire a Hagenbeck to +train the cattle for a couple of years, so that they would know enough +to walk aboard of the ship when he gave the signal; but to-day, if we +had to ship cattle, we would know enough to make a greased chute and +slide them on board in a jiffy." + +The telephone world has now its own standards and ideals. It has a +language of its own, a telephonese that is quite unintelligible to +outsiders. It has as many separate branches of study as medicine or law. +There are few men, half a dozen at most, who can now be said to have +a general knowledge of telephony. And no matter how wise a telephone +expert may be, he can never reach perfection, because of the amazing +variety of things that touch or concern his profession. + +"No one man knows all the details now," said Theodore Vail. "Several +days ago I was walking through a telephone exchange and I saw something +new. I asked Mr. Carty to explain it. He is our chief engineer; but +he did not understand it. We called the manager. He did n't know, and +called his assistant. He did n't know, and called the local engineer, +who was able to tell us what it was." + +To sum up this development of the art of tele-phony--to present a +bird's-eye view--it may be divided into four periods: + +1. Experiment. 1876 to 1886. This was the period of invention, in which +there were no experts and no authorities. Telephonic apparatus consisted +of makeshifts and adaptations. It was the period of iron wire, imperfect +transmitters, grounded circuits, boy operators, peg switchboards, local +batteries, and overhead lines. + +2. Development. 1886 to 1896. In this period amateurs became engineers. +The proper type of apparatus was discovered, and was improved to a +high point of efficiency. In this period came the multiple switchboard, +copper wire, girl operators, underground cables, metallic circuit, +common battery, and the long-distance lines. + +3. Expansion. 1896 to 1906. This was the era of big business. It was an +autumn period, in which the telephone men and the public began to reap +the fruits of twenty years of investment and hard work. It was the +period of the message rate, the pay station, the farm line, and the +private branch exchange. + +4. Organization. 1906--. With the success of the Pupin coil, there came +a larger life for the telephone. It became less local and more national. +It began to link together its scattered parts. It discouraged the waste +and anarchy of duplication. It taught its older, but smaller brother, +the telegraph, to cooperate. It put itself more closely in touch with +the will of the public. And it is now pushing ahead, along the two roads +of standardization and efficiency, toward its ideal of one universal +telephone system for the whole nation. The key-word of the telephone +development of to-day is this--organization. + + + +CHAPTER V. THE EXPANSION OF THE BUSINESS + +The telephone business did not really begin to grow big and overspread +the earth until 1896, but the keynote of expansion was first sounded by +Theodore Vail in the earliest days, when as yet the telephone was a babe +in arms. In 1879 Vail said, in a letter written to one of his captains: + +"Tell our agents that we have a proposition on foot to connect the +different cities for the purpose of personal communication, and in other +ways to organize a GRAND TELEPHONIC SYSTEM." + +This was brave talk at that time, when there were not in the whole world +as many telephones as there are to-day in Cincinnati. It was brave talk +in those days of iron wire, peg switchboards, and noisy diaphragms. Most +telephone men regarded it as nothing more than talk. They did not see +any business future for the telephone except in short-distance service. +But Vail was in earnest. His previous experience as the head of the +railway mail service had lifted him up to a higher point of view. +He knew the need of a national system of communication that would be +quicker and more direct than either the telegraph or the post office. + +"I saw that if the telephone could talk one mile to-day," he said, "it +would be talking a hundred miles to-morrow." And he persisted, in spite +of a considerable deal of ridicule, in maintaining that the telephone +was destined to connect cities and nations as well as individuals. + +Four months after he had prophesied the "grand telephonic system," he +encouraged Charles J. Glidden, of world-tour fame, to build a telephone +line between Boston and Lowell. This was the first inter-city line. It +was well placed, as the owners of the Lowell mills lived in Boston, and +it made a small profit from the start. This success cheered Vail on to +a master-effort. He resolved to build a line from Boston to Providence, +and was so stubbornly bent upon doing this that when the Bell Company +refused to act, he picked up the risk and set off with it alone. +He organized a company of well-known Rhode Islanders--nicknamed the +"Governors' Company"--and built the line. It was a failure at first, +and went by the name of "Vail's Folly." But Engineer Carty, by a happy +thought, DOUBLED THE WIRE, and thus in a moment established two new +factors in the telephone business--the Metallic Circuit and the Long +Distance line. + +At once the Bell Company came over to Vail's point of view, bought +his new line, and launched out upon what seemed to be the foolhardy +enterprise of stringing a double wire from Boston to New York. This +was to be not only the longest of all telephone lines, strung on ten +thousand poles; it was to be a line de luxe, built of glistening red +copper, not iron. Its cost was to be seventy thousand dollars, which was +an enormous sum in those hardscrabble days. There was much opposition to +such extravagance, and much ridicule. "I would n't take that line as a +gift," said one of the Bell Company's officials. + +But when the last coil of wire was stretched into place, and the first +"Hello" leaped from Boston to New York, the new line was a victorious +success. It carried messages from the first day; and more, it raised the +whole telephone business to a higher level. It swept away the prejudice +that telephone service could become nothing more than a neighborhood +affair. "It was the salvation of the business," said Edward J. Hill. It +marked a turning-point in the history of the telephone, when the day +of small things was ended and the day of great things was begun. No +one man, no hundred men, had created it. It was the final result of ten +years of invention and improvement. + +While this epoch-making line was being strung, Vail was pushing his +"grand telephonic system" policy by organizing The American Telephone +and Telegraph Company. This, too, was a master-stroke. It was the +introduction of the staff-and-line method of organization into business. +It was doing for the forty or fifty Bell Companies what Von Moltke +did for the German army prior to the Franco-Prussian War. It was the +creation of a central company that should link all local companies +together, and itself own and operate the means by which these companies +are united. This central company was to grapple with all national +problems, to own all telephones and long-distance lines, to protect all +patents, and to be the headquarters of invention, information, capital, +and legal protection for the entire federation of Bell Companies. + +Seldom has a company been started with so small a capital and so vast a +purpose. It had no more than $100,000 of capital stock, in 1885; but +its declared object was nothing less than to establish a system of +wire communication for the human race. Here are, in its own words, the +marching orders of this Company: "To connect one or more points in each +and every city, town, or place an the State of New York, with one or +more points in each and every other city, town, or place in said State, +and in each and every other of the United States, and in Canada, and +Mexico; and each and every of said cities, towns, and places is to be +connected with each and every other city, town, or place in said States +and countries, and also by cable and other appropriate means with the +rest of the known world." + +So ran Vail's dream, and for nine years he worked mightily to make it +come true. He remained until the various parts of the business had grown +together, and until his plan for a "grand telephonic system" was under +way and fairly well understood. Then he went out, into a series of +picturesque enterprises, until he had built up a four-square fortune; +and recently, in 1907, he came back to be the head of the telephone +business, and to complete the work of organization that he started +thirty years before. + +When Vail said auf wiedersehen to the telephone business, it had passed +from infancy to childhood. It was well shaped but not fully grown. Its +pioneering days were over. It was self-supporting and had a little money +in the bank. But it could not then have carried the load of traffic that +it carries to-day. It had still too many problems to solve and too +much general inertia to overcome. It needed to be conserved, drilled, +educated, popularized. And the man who was finally chosen to replace +Vail was in many respects the appropriate leader for such a preparatory +period. + +Hudson--John Elbridge Hudson--was the name of the new head of the +telephone people. He was a man of middle age, born in Lynn and bred in +Boston; a long-pedigreed New Englander, whose ancestors had smelted +iron ore in Lynn when Charles the First was King. He was a lawyer by +profession and a university professor by temperament. His specialty, as +a man of affairs, had been marine law; and his hobby was the collection +of rare books and old English engravings. He was a master of the Greek +language, and very fond of using it. On all possible occasions he used +the language of Pericles in his conversation; and even carried this +preference so far as to write his business memoranda in Greek. He was +above all else a scholar, then a lawyer, and somewhat incidentally the +central figure in the telephone world. + +But it was of tremendous value to the telephone business at that time to +have at its head a man of Hudson's intellectual and moral calibre. + +He gave it tone and prestige. He built up its credit. He kept it clean +and clear above all suspicion of wrong-doing. He held fast whatever +had been gained. And he prepared the way for the period of expansion by +borrowing fifty millions for improvements, and by adding greatly to the +strength and influence of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. + +Hudson remained at the head of the telephone table until his death, in +1900, and thus lived to see the dawn of the era of big business. Under +his regime great things were done in the development of the art. The +business was pushed ahead at every point by its captains. Every man in +his place, trying to give a little better service than yesterday--that +was the keynote of the Hudson period. There was no one preeminent +genius. Each important step forward was the result of the cooperation of +many minds, and the prodding necessities of a growing traffic. + +By 1896, when the Common Battery system created a new era, the telephone +engineer had pretty well mastered his simpler troubles. He was able to +handle his wires, no matter how many. By this time, too, the public +was ready for the telephone. A new generation had grown up, without the +prejudices of its fathers. People had grown away from the telegraphic +habit of thought, which was that wire communications were expensive +luxuries for the few. The telephone was, in fact, a new social nerve, +so new and so novel that very nearly twenty years went by before it +had fully grown into place, and before the social body developed the +instinct of using it. + +Not that the difficulties of the telephone engineers were over, for they +were not. They have seemed to grow more numerous and complex every year. +But by 1896 enough had been done to warrant a forward movement. For the +next ten-year period the keynote of telephone history was EXPANSION. +Under the prevailing flat-rate plan of payment, all customers paid +the same yearly price and then used their telephones as often as they +pleased. This was a simple method, and the most satisfactory for small +towns and farming regions. But in a great city such a plan grew to be +suicidal. In New York, for instance, the price had to be raised to $240, +which lifted the telephone as high above the mass of the citizens as +though it were a piano or a diamond sunburst. Such a plan was strangling +the business. It was shutting out the small users. It was clogging the +wires with deadhead calls. It was giving some people too little service +and others too much. It was a very unsatisfactory situation. + +How to extend the service and at the same time cheapen it to small +users--that was the Gordian knot; and the man who unquestionably did +most to untie it was Edward J. Hall. Mr. Hall founded the telephone +business in Buffalo in 1878, and seven years afterwards became the chief +of the long-distance traffic. He was then, and is to-day, one of the +statesmen of the telephone. For more than thirty years he has been the +"candid friend" of the business, incessantly suggesting, probing, and +criticising. Keen and dispassionate, with a genius for mercilessly +cutting to the marrow of a proposition, Hall has at the same time been a +zealot for the improvement and extension of telephone service. It was he +who set the agents free from the ball-and-chain of royalties, allowing +them to pay instead a percentage of gross receipts. And it was he who +"broke the jam," as a lumberman would say, by suggesting the MESSAGE +RATE system. + +By this plan, which U. N. Bethell developed to its highest point in New +York, a user of the telephone pays a fixed minimum price for a certain +number of messages per year, and extra for all messages over this +number. The large user pays more, and the little user pays less. It +opened up the way to such an expansion of telephone business as Bell, +in his rosiest dreams, had never imagined. In three years, after 1896, +there were twice as many users; in six years there were four times as +many; in ten years there were eight to one. What with the message rate +and the pay station, the telephone was now on its way to be universal. +It was adapted to all kinds and conditions of men. A great corporation, +nerved at every point with telephone wires, may now pay fifty thousand +dollars to the Bell Company, while at the same time a young Irish +immigrant boy, just arrived in New York City, may offer five coppers and +find at his disposal a fifty million dollar telephone system. + +When the message rate was fairly well established, Hudson died--fell +suddenly to the ground as he was about to step into a railway carriage. +In his place came Frederick P. Fish, also a lawyer and a Bostonian. Fish +was a popular, optimistic man, with a "full-speed-ahead" temperament. +He pushed the policy of expansion until he broke all the records. He +borrowed money in stupendous amounts--$150,000,000 at one time--and +flung it into a campaign of red-hot development. More business he +demanded, and more, and more, until his captains, like a thirty-horse +team of galloping horses, became very nearly uncontrollable. + +It was a fast and furious period. The whole country was ablaze with a +passion of prosperity. After generations of conflict, the men with large +ideas had at last put to rout the men of small ideas. The waste +and folly of competition had everywhere driven men to the policy of +cooperation. Mills were linked to mills and factories to factories, in +a vast mutualism of industry such as no other age, perhaps, has ever +known. And as the telephone is essentially the instrument of co-working +and interdependent people, it found itself suddenly welcomed as the most +popular and indispensable of all the agencies that put men in touch with +each other. + +To describe this growth in a single sentence, we might say that the +Bell telephone secured its first million of capital in 1879; its first +million of earnings in 1882; its first million of dividends in 1884; its +first million of surplus in 1885. It had paid out its first million for +legal expenses by 1886; began first to send a million messages a day +in 1888; had strung its first million miles of wire in 1900; and had +installed its first million telephones in 1898. By 1897 it had spun as +many cobwebs of wire as the mighty Western Union itself; by 1900 it had +twice as many miles of wire as the Western Union, and in 1905 FIVE TIMES +as many. Such was the plunging progress of the Bell Companies in this +period of expansion, that by 1905 they had swept past all European +countries combined, not only in the quality of the service but in the +actual number of telephones in use. This, too, without a cent of public +money, or the protection of a tariff, or the prestige of a governmental +bureau. + +By 1892 Boston and New York were talking to Chicago, Milwaukee, +Pittsburg, and Washington. One-half of the people of the United States +were within talking distance of each other. The THOUSAND-MILE TALK had +ceased to be a fairy tale. Several years later the western end of the +line was pushed over the plains to Nebraska, enabling the spoken word in +Boston to be heard in Omaha. Slowly and with much effort the public were +taught to substitute the telephone for travel. A special long-distance +salon was fitted up in New York City to entice people into the habit +of talking to other cities. Cabs were sent for customers; and when one +arrived, he was escorted over Oriental rugs to a gilded booth, draped +with silken curtains. This was the famous "Room Nine." By such and many +other allurements a larger idea of telephone service was given to the +public mind; until in 1909 at least eighteen thousand New York-Chicago +conversations were held, and the revenue from strictly long-distance +messages was twenty-two thousand dollars a day. + +By 1906 even the Rocky Mountain Bell Company had grown to be a +ten-million-dollar enterprise. It began at Salt Lake City with a hundred +telephones, in 1880. Then it reached out to master an area of four +hundred and thirteen thousand square miles--a great Lone Land of +undeveloped resources. Its linemen groped through dense forests where +their poles looked like toothpicks beside the towering pines and cedars. +They girdled the mountains and basted the prairies with wire, until the +lonely places were brought together and made sociable. They drove off +the Indians, who wanted the bright wire for ear-rings and bracelets; +and the bears, which mistook the humming of the wires for the buzzing +of bees, and persisted in gnawing the poles down. With the most heroic +optimism, this Rocky Mountain Company persevered until, in 1906, it had +created a seventy-thousand-mile nerve-system for the far West. + +Chicago, in this year, had two hundred thou-sand telephones in use, in +her two hundred square miles of area. The business had been built up by +General Anson Stager, who was himself wealthy, and able to attract the +support of such men as John Crerar, H. H. Porter, and Robert T. Lincoln. +Since 1882 it has paid dividends, and in one glorious year its stock +soared to four hundred dollars a share. The old-timers--the men who +clambered over roof-tops in 1878 and tacked iron wires wherever they +could without being chased off--are still for the most part in control +of the Chicago company. + +But as might have been expected, it was New York City that was the +record-breaker when the era of telephone expansion arrived. Here the +flood of big business struck with the force of a tidal wave. The number +of users leaped from 56,000 in 1900 up to 810,000 in 1908. In a single +year of sweating and breathless activity, 65,000 new telephones were +put on desks or hung on walls--an average of one new user for every two +minutes of the business day. + +Literally tons, and hundreds of tons, of telephones were hauled in drays +from the factory and put in place in New York's homes and offices. More +and more were demanded, until to-day there are more telephones in New +York than there are in the four countries, France, Belgium, Holland, and +Switzerland combined. As a user of telephones New York has risen to be +unapproachable. Mass together all the telephones of London, Glasgow, +Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffleld, Bristol, and +Belfast, and there will even then be barely as many as are carrying the +conversations of this one American city. + +In 1879 the New York telephone directory was a small card, showing +two hundred and fifty-two names; but now it has grown to be an +eight-hundred-page quarterly, with a circulation of half a million, and +requiring twenty drays, forty horses, and four hundred men to do the +work of distribution. There was one shabby little exchange thirty years +ago; but now there are fifty-two exchanges, as the nerve-centres of +a vast fifty-million-dollar system. Incredible as it may seem to +foreigners, it is literally true that in a single building in New York, +the Hudson Terminal, there are more telephones than in Odessa or Madrid, +more than in the two kingdoms of Greece and Bulgaria combined. + +Merely to operate this system requires an army of more than five +thousand girls. Merely to keep their records requires two hundred and +thirty-five million sheets of paper a year. Merely to do the writing of +these records wears away five hundred and sixty thousand lead pencils. +And merely to give these girls a cup of tea or coffee at noon, compels +the Bell Company to buy yearly six thousand pounds of tea, seventeen +thousand pounds of coffee, forty-eight thousand cans of condensed milk, +and one hundred and forty barrels of sugar. + +The myriad wires of this New York system are tingling with talk every +minute of the day and night. They are most at rest between three and +four o'clock in the morning, although even then there are usually ten +calls a minute. Between five and six o'clock, two thousand New Yorkers +are awake and at the telephone. Half an hour later there are twice as +many. Between seven and eight twenty-five thousand people have called +up twenty-five thousand other people, so that there are as many people +talking by wire as there were in the whole city of New York in the +Revolutionary period. Even this is only the dawn of the day's business. +By half-past eight it is doubled; by nine it is trebled; by ten it is +multiplied sixfold; and by eleven the roar has become an incredible +babel of one hundred and eighty thousand conversations an hour, with +fifty new voices clamoring at the exchanges every second. + +This is "the peak of the load." It is the topmost pinnacle of talk. It +is the utmost degree of service that the telephone has been required to +give in any city. And it is as much a world's wonder, to men and +women of imagination, as the steel mills of Homestead or the turbine +leviathans that curve across the Atlantic Ocean in four and a half days. + +As to the men who built it up: Charles F. Cutler died in 1907, but +most of the others are still alive and busy. Union N. Bethell, now +in Cutler's place at the head of the New York Company, has been the +operating chief for eighteen years. He is a man of shrewdness and +sympathy, with a rare sagacity in solving knotty problems, a president +of the new type, who regards his work as a sort of obligation he owes +to the public. And just as foreigners go to Pittsburg to see the steel +business at its best; just as they go to Iowa and Kansas to see the +New Farmer, so they make pilgrimages to Bethell's office to learn the +profession of telephony. + +This unparalleled telephone system of New York grew up without having +at any time the rivalry of competition. But in many other cities and +especially in the Middle West, there sprang up in 1895 a medley of +independent companies. The time of the original patents had expired, and +the Bell Companies found themselves freed from the expense of litigation +only to be snarled up in a tangle of duplication. In a few years there +were six thousand of these little Robinson Crusoe companies. And by 1901 +they had put in use more than a million telephones and were professing +to have a capital of a hundred millions. + +Most of these companies were necessary and did much to expand the +telephone business into new territory. They were in fact small mutual +associations of a dozen or a hundred farmers, whose aim was to get +telephone service at cost. But there were other companies, probably +a thousand or more, which were organized by promoters who built their +hopes on the fact that the Bell Companies were unpopular, and on the +myth that they were fabulously rich. Instead of legitimately extending +telephone lines into communities that had none, these promoters +proceeded to inflict the messy snarl of an overlapping system upon +whatever cities would give them permission to do so. + +In this way, masked as competition, the nuisance and waste of +duplication began in most American cities. The telephone business was +still so young, it was so little appreciated even by the telephone +officials and engineers, that the public regarded a second or a +third telephone system in one city as quite a possible and desirable +innovation. "We have two ears," said one promoter; "why not therefore +have two telephones?" + +This duplication went merrily on for years before it was generally +discovered that the telephone is not an ear, but a nerve system; and +that such an experiment as a duplicate nerve system has never been +attempted by Nature, even in her most frivolous moods. Most people +fancied that a telephone system was practically the same as a gas or +electric light system, which can often be duplicated with the result of +cheaper rates and better service. They did not for years discover that +two telephone companies in one city means either half service or double +cost, just as two fire departments or two post offices would. + +Some of these duplicate companies built up a complete plant, and gave +good local service, while others proved to be mere stock bubbles. Most +of them were over-capitalized, depending upon public sympathy to atone +for deficiencies in equipment. One which had printed fifty million +dollars of stock for sale was sold at auction in 1909 for four hundred +thousand dollars. All told, there were twenty-three of these bubbles +that burst in 1905, twenty-one in 1906, and twelve in 1907. So high +has been the death-rate among these isolated companies that at a recent +convention of telephone agents, the chairman's gavel was made of +thirty-five pieces of wood, taken from thirty-five switchboards of +thirty-five extinct companies. + +A study of twelve single-system cities and twenty-seven double-system +cities shows that there are about eleven per cent more telephones under +the double-system, and that where the second system is put in, every +fifth user is obliged to pay for two telephones. The rates are alike, +whether a city has one or two systems. Duplicating companies raised +their rates in sixteen cities out of the twenty-seven, and reduced them +in one city. Taking the United States as a whole, there are to-day fully +two hundred and fifty thousand people who are paying for two telephones +instead of one, an economic waste of at least ten million dollars a +year. + +A fair-minded survey of the entire independent telephone movement would +probably show that it was at first a stimulant, followed, as stimulants +usually are, by a reaction. It was unquestionably for several years a +spur to the Bell Companies. But it did not fulfil its promises of cheap +rates, better service, and high dividends; it did little or nothing to +improve telephonic apparatus, producing nothing new except the automatic +switchboard--a brilliant invention, which is now in its experimental +period. In the main, perhaps, it has been a reactionary and troublesome +movement in the cities, and a progressive movement among the farmers. + +By 1907 it was a wave that had spent its force. It was no longer rolling +along easily on the broad ocean of hope, but broken and turned aside +by the rocks of actual conditions. One by one the telephone promoters +learned the limitations of an isolated company, and asked to be included +as members of the Bell family. In 1907 four hundred and fifty-eight +thousand independent telephones were linked by wire to the nearest Bell +Company; and in 1908 these were followed by three hundred and fifty +thousand more. After this landslide to the policy of consolidation, +there still remained a fairly large assortment of independent companies; +but they had lost their dreams and their illusions. + +As might have been expected, the independent movement produced a number +of competent local leaders, but none of national importance. The Bell +Companies, on the other hand, were officered by men who had for a +quarter of a century been surveying telephone problems from a national +point of view. At their head, from 1907 onwards, was Theodore N. Vail, +who had returned dramatically, at the precise moment when he was needed, +to finish the work that he had begun in 1878. He had been absent for +twenty years, developing water-power and building street-railways in +South America. In the first act of the telephone drama, it was he +who put the enterprise upon a business basis, and laid down the first +principles of its policy. In the second and third acts he had no place; +but when the curtain rose upon the fourth act, Vail was once more the +central figure, standing white-haired among his captains, and pushing +forward the completion of the "grand telephonic system" that he had +dreamed of when the telephone was three years old. + +Thus it came about that the telephone business was created by Vail, +conserved by Hudson, expanded by Fish, and is now in process of being +consolidated by Vail. It is being knit together into a stupendous Bell +System--a federation of self-governing companies, united by a central +company that is the busiest of them all. It is no longer protected by +any patent monopoly. Whoever is rich enough and rash enough may enter +the field. But it has all the immeasurable advantages that come from +long experience, immense bulk, the most highly skilled specialists, +and an abundance of capital. "The Bell System is strong," says Vail, +"because we are all tied up together; and the success of one is +therefore the concern of all." + +The Bell System! Here we have the motif of American telephone +development. Here is the most comprehensive idea that has entered any +telephone engineer's brain. Already this Bell System has grown to be so +vast, so nearly akin to a national nerve system, that there is nothing +else to which we can compare it. It is so wide-spread that few are +aware of its greatness. It is strung out over fifty thousand cities and +communities. + +If it were all gathered together into one place, this Bell System, it +would make a city of Telephonia as large as Baltimore. It would contain +half of the telephone property of the world. Its actual wealth would be +fully $760,000,000, and its revenue would be greater than the revenue of +the city of New York. + +Part of the property of the city of Telephonia consists of ten million +poles, as many as would make a fence from New York to California, or put +a stockade around Texas. If the Telephonians wished to use these poles +at home, they might drive them in as piles along their water-front, and +have a twenty-five thousand-acre dock; or if their city were a hundred +square miles in extent, they might set up a seven-ply wall around it +with these poles. + +Wire, too! Eleven million miles of it! This city of Telephonia would +be the capital of an empire of wire. Not all the men in New York State +could shoulder this burden of wire and carry it. Throw all the people +of Illinois in one end of the scale, and put on the other side the +wire-wealth of Telephonia, and long before the last coil was in place, +the Illinoisans would be in the air. + +What would this city do for a living? It would make two-thirds of +the telephones, cables, and switchboards of all countries. Nearly +one-quarter of its citizens would work in factories, while the others +would be busy in six thousand exchanges, making it possible for the +people of the United States to talk to one another at the rate of SEVEN +THOUSAND MILLION CONVERSATIONS A YEAR. + +The pay-envelope army that moves to work every morning in Telephonia +would be a host of one hundred and ten thousand men and girls, mostly +girls,--as many girls as would fill Vassar College a hundred times and +more, or double the population of Nevada. Put these men and girls in +line, march them ten abreast, and six hours would pass before the last +company would arrive at the reviewing stand. In single file this throng +of Telephonians would make a living wall from New York to New Haven. + +Such is the extraordinary city of which Alexander Graham Bell was the +only resident in 1875. It has been built up without the backing of any +great bank or multi-millionaire. There have been no Vanderbilts in it, +no Astors, Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Harrimans. There are even now +only four men who own as many as ten thousand shares of the stock of +the central company. This Bell System stands as the life-work of +unprivileged men, who are for the most part still alive and busy. With +very few and trivial exceptions, every part of it was made in the +United States. No other industrial organism of equal size owes foreign +countries so little. Alike in its origin, its development, and +its highest point of efficiency and expansion, the telephone is as +essentially American as the Declaration of Independence or the monument +on Bunker Hill. + + + +CHAPTER VI. NOTABLE USERS OF THE TELEPHONE + +What we might call the telephonization of city life, for lack of a +simpler word, has remarkably altered our manner of living from what it +was in the days of Abraham Lincoln. It has enabled us to be more social +and cooperative. It has literally abolished the isolation of separate +families, and has made us members of one great family. It has become so +truly an organ of the social body that by telephone we now enter into +contracts, give evidence, try lawsuits, make speeches, propose marriage, +confer degrees, appeal to voters, and do almost everything else that is +a matter of speech. + +In stores and hotels this wire traffic has grown to an almost +bewildering extent, as these are the places where many interests meet. +The hundred largest hotels in New York City have twenty-one thousand +telephones--nearly as many as the continent of Africa and more than the +kingdom of Spain. In an average year they send six million messages. The +Waldorf-Astoria alone tops all residential buildings with eleven hundred +and twenty telephones and five hundred thousand calls a year; while +merely the Christmas Eve orders that flash into Marshall Field's store, +or John Wanamaker's, have risen as high as the three thousand mark. + +Whether the telephone does most to concentrate population, or to scatter +it, is a question that has not yet been examined. It is certainly true +that it has made the skyscraper possible, and thus helped to create +an absolutely new type of city, such as was never imagined even in the +fairy tales of ancient nations. The skyscraper is ten years younger than +the telephone. It is now generally seen to be the ideal building for +business offices. It is one of the few types of architecture that may +fairly be called American. And its efficiency is largely, if not mainly, +due to the fact that its inhabitants may run errands by telephone as +well as by elevator. + +There seems to be no sort of activity which is not being made more +convenient by the telephone. It is used to call the duck-shooters in +Western Canada when a flock of birds has arrived; and to direct the +movements of the Dragon in Wagner's grand opera "Siegfried." At the last +Yale-Harvard football game, it conveyed almost instantaneous news to +fifty thousand people in various parts of New England. At the Vanderbilt +Cup Race its wires girdled the track and reported every gain or mishap +of the racing autos. And at such expensive pageants as that of the +Quebec Tercentenary in 1908, where four thousand actors came and went +upon a ten-acre stage, every order was given by telephone. + +Public officials, even in the United States, have been slow to change +from the old-fashioned and more dignified use of written documents +and uniformed messengers; but in the last ten years there has been a +sweeping revolution in this respect. Government by telephone! This is a +new idea that has already arrived in the more efficient departments of +the Federal service. And as for the present Congress, that body has gone +so far as to plan for a special system of its own, in both Houses, so +that all official announcements may be heard by wire. + +Garfield was the first among American Presidents to possess a telephone. +An exhibition instrument was placed in his house, without cost, in 1878, +while he was still a member of Congress. Neither Cleveland nor Harrison, +for temperamental reasons, used the magic wire very often. Under their +regime, there was one lonely idle telephone in the White House, used by +the servants several times a week. But with McKinley came a new order of +things. To him a telephone was more than a necessity. It was a pastime, +an exhilarating sport. He was the one President who really revelled in +the comforts of telephony. In 1895 he sat in his Canton home and heard +the cheers of the Chicago Convention. Later he sat there and ran +the first presidential telephone campaign; talked to his managers in +thirty-eight States. Thus he came to regard the telephone with a higher +degree of appreciation than any of his predecessors had done, and +eulogized it on many public occasions. "It is bringing us all closer +together," was his favorite phrase. + +To Roosevelt the telephone was mainly for emergencies. He used it to the +full during the Chicago Convention of 1907 and the Peace Conference at +Portsmouth. But with Taft the telephone became again the common avenue +of conversation. He has introduced at least one new telephonic custom a +long-distance talk with his family every evening, when he is away from +home. Instead of the solitary telephone of Cleveland-Harrison days, the +White House has now a branch exchange of its own--Main 6--with a sheaf +of wires that branch out into every room as well as to the nearest +central. + +Next to public officials, bankers were perhaps the last to accept the +facilities of the telephone. They were slow to abandon the fallacy that +no business can be done without a written record. James Stillman, of New +York, was first among bankers to foresee the telephone era. As early +as 1875, while Bell was teaching his infant telephone to talk, Stillman +risked two thousand dollars in a scheme to establish a crude dial system +of wire communication, which later grew into New York's first telephone +exchange. At the present time, the banker who works closest to his +telephone is probably George W. Perkins, of the J. P. Morgan group +of bankers. "He is the only man," says Morgan, "who can raise twenty +millions in twenty minutes." The Perkins plan of rapid transit telephony +is to prepare a list of names, from ten to thirty, and to flash from one +to another as fast as the operator can ring them up. Recently one of +the other members of the Morgan bank proposed to enlarge its telephone +equipment. "What will we gain by more wires?" asked the operator. "If +we were to put in a six-hundred pair cable, Mr. Perkins would keep it +busy." + +The most brilliant feat of the telephone in the financial world was +done during the panic of 1907. At the height of the storm, on a Saturday +evening, the New York bankers met in an almost desperate conference. +They decided, as an emergency measure of self-protection, not to ship +cash to Western banks. At midnight they telephoned this decision to +the bankers of Chicago and St. Louis. These men, in turn, conferred by +telephone, and on Sunday afternoon called up the bankers of neighboring +States. And so the news went from 'phone to 'phone, until by Monday +morning all bankers and chief depositors were aware of the situation, +and prepared for the team-play that prevented any general disaster. + +As for stockbrokers of the Wall Street species, they transact +practically all their business by telephone. In their stock exchange +stand six hundred and forty one booths, each one the terminus of a +private wire. A firm of brokers will count it an ordinary year's talking +to send fifty thousand messages; and there is one firm which last year +sent twice as many. Of all brokers, the one who finally accomplished +most by telephony was unquestionably E. H. Harriman. In the mansion that +he built at Arden, there were a hundred telephones, sixty of them linked +to the long-distance lines. What the brush is to the artist, what the +chisel is to the sculptor, the telephone was to Harriman. He built his +fortune with it. It was in his library, his bathroom, his private car, +his camp in the Oregon wilder-ness. No transaction was too large or too +involved to be settled over its wires. He saved the credit of the +Erie by telephone--lent it five million dollars as he lay at home on +a sickbed. "He is a slave to the telephone," wrote a magazine writer. +"Nonsense," replied Harriman, "it is a slave to me." + +The telephone arrived in time to prevent big corporations from being +unwieldy and aristocratic. The foreman of a Pittsburg coal company may +now stand in his subterranean office and talk to the president of +the Steel Trust, who sits on the twenty-first floor of a New York +skyscraper. The long-distance talks, especially, have grown to be +indispensable to the corporations whose plants are scattered and +geographically misplaced--to the mills of New England, for instance, +that use the cotton of the South and sell so much of their product to +the Middle West. To the companies that sell perishable commodities, +an instantaneous conversation with a buyer in a distant city has often +saved a carload or a cargo. Such caterers as the meat-packers, who were +among the first to realize what Bell had made possible, have greatly +accelerated the wheels of their business by inter-city conversations. +For ten years or longer the Cudahys have talked every business morning +between Omaha and Boston, via fifteen hundred and seventy miles of wire. + +In the refining of oil, the Standard Oil Company alone, at its New York +office, sends two hundred and thirty thousand messages a year. In the +making of steel, a chemical analysis is made of each caldron of molten +pig-iron, when it starts on its way to be refined, and this analysis is +sent by telephone to the steelmaker, so that he will know exactly how +each potful is to be handled. In the floating of logs down rivers, +instead of having relays of shouters to prevent the logs from jamming, +there is now a wire along the bank, with a telephone linked on at every +point of danger. In the rearing of skyscrapers, it is now usual to have +a temporary wire strung vertically, so that the architect may stand on +the ground and confer with a foreman who sits astride of a naked girder +three hundred feet up in the air. And in the electric light business, +the current is distributed wholly by telephoned orders. To give New York +the seven million electric lights that have abolished night in that +city requires twelve private exchanges and five hundred and twelve +telephones. All the power that creates this artificial daylight is +generated at a single station, and let flow to twenty-five storage +centres. Minute by minute, its flow is guided by an expert, who sits at +a telephone exchange as though he were a pilot at the wheel of an ocean +liner. + +The first steamship line to take notice of the telephone was the Clyde, +which had a wire from dock to office in 1877; and the first railway was +the Pennsylvania, which two years later was persuaded by Professor Bell +himself to give it a trial in Altoona. Since then, this railroad has +become the chief beneficiary of the art of telephony. It has one hundred +and seventy-five exchanges, four hundred operators, thirteen thousand +telephones, and twenty thousand miles of wire--a more ample system than +the city of New York had in 1896. + +To-day the telephone goes to sea in the passenger steamer and the +warship. Its wires are waiting at the dock and the depot, so that a +tourist may sit in his stateroom and talk with a friend in some distant +office. It is one of the most incredible miracles of telephony that +a passenger at New York, who is about to start for Chicago on a fast +express, may telephone to Chicago from the drawing-room of a Pullman. He +himself, on the swiftest of all trains, will not arrive in Chicago for +eighteen hours; but the flying words can make the journey, and RETURN, +while his train is waiting for the signal to start. + +In the operation of trains, the railroads have waited thirty years +before they dared to trust the telephone, just as they waited fifteen +years before they dared to trust the telegraph. In 1883 a few railways +used the telephone in a small way, but in 1907, when a law was passed +that made telegraphers highly expensive, there was a general swing +to the telephone. Several dozen roads have now put it in use, some +employing it as an associate of the Morse method and others as a +complete substitute. It has already been found to be the quickest way of +despatching trains. It will do in five minutes what the telegraph did +in ten. And it has enabled railroads to hire more suitable men for the +smaller offices. + +In news-gathering, too, much more than in railroading, the day of the +telephone has arrived. The Boston Globe was the first paper to receive +news by telephone. Later came The Washington Star, which had a wire +strung to the Capitol, and thereby gained an hour over its competitors. +To-day the evening papers receive most of their news over the wire a +la Bell instead of a la Morse. This has resulted in a specialization of +reporters--one man runs for the news and another man writes it. Some of +the runners never come to the office. They receive their assignments +by telephone, and their salaries by mail. There are even a few who are +allowed to telephone their news directly to a swift linotype operator, +who clicks it into type on his machine, without the scratch of a pencil. +This, of course, is the ideal method of news-gathering, which is rarely +possible. + +A paper of the first class, such as The New York World, has now an +outfit of twenty trunk lines and eighty telephones. Its outgoing calls +are two hundred thousand a year and its incoming calls three hundred +thousand, which means that for every morning, evening, or Sunday +edition, there has been an average of seven hundred and fifty messages. +The ordinary newspaper in a small town cannot afford such a service, +but recently the United Press has originated a cooperative method. It +telephones the news over one wire to ten or twelve newspapers at one +time. In ten minutes a thousand words can in this way be flung out to a +dozen towns, as quickly as by telegraph and much cheaper. + +But it is in a dangerous crisis, when safety seems to hang upon a +second, that the telephone is at its best. It is the instrument of +emergencies, a sort of ubiquitous watchman. When the girl operator in +the exchange hears a cry for help--"Quick! The hospital!" "The fire +department!" "The police!" she seldom waits to hear the number. She +knows it. She is trained to save half-seconds. And it is at such +moments, if ever, that the users of a telephone can appreciate its +insurance value. No doubt, if a King Richard III were worsted on a +modern battlefield, his instinctive cry would be, "My Kingdom for a +telephone!" + +When instant action is needed in the city of New York, a General Alarm +can in five minutes be sent by the police wires over its whole vast +area of three hundred square miles. When, recently, a gas main broke in +Brooklyn, sixty girls were at once called to the centrals in that part +of the city to warn the ten thousand families who had been placed in +danger. When the ill-fated General Slocum caught fire, a mechanic in a +factory on the water-front saw the blaze, and had the presence of mind +to telephone the newspapers, the hospitals, and the police. When a small +child is lost, or a convict has escaped from prison, or the forest is +on fire, or some menace from the weather is at hand, the telephone bells +clang out the news, just as the nerves jangle the bells of pain when +the body is in danger. In one tragic case, the operator in Folsom, New +Mexico, refused to quit her post until she had warned her people of a +flood that had broken loose in the hills above the village. Because of +her courage, nearly all were saved, though she herself was drowned at +the switchboard. Her name--Mrs. S. J. Rooke--deserves to be remembered. + +If a disaster cannot be prevented, it is the telephone, usually, that +brings first aid to the injured. After the destruction of San Francisco, +Governor Guild, of Massachusetts, sent an appeal for the stricken city +to the three hundred and fifty-four mayors of his State; and by the +courtesy of the Bell Company, which carried the messages free, they were +delivered to the last and furthermost mayors in less than five hours. +After the destruction of Messina, an order for enough lumber to build +ten thousand new houses was cabled to New York and telephoned to Western +lumbermen. So quickly was this order filled that on the twelfth day +after the arrival of the cablegram, the ships were on their way to +Messina with the lumber. After the Kansas City flood of 1903, when the +drenched city was without railways or street-cars or electric lights, +it was the telephone that held the city together and brought help to the +danger-spots. And after the Baltimore fire, the telephone exchange was +the last force to quit and the first to recover. Its girls sat on their +stools at the switchboard until the window-panes were broken by the +heat. Then they pulled the covers over the board and walked out. +Two hours later the building was in ashes. Three hours later another +building was rented on the unburned rim of the city, and the wire chiefs +were at work. In one day there was a system of wires for the use of the +city officials. In two days these were linked to long-distance wires; +and in eleven days a two-thousand-line switchboard was in full working +trim. This feat still stands as the record in rebuilding. + +In the supreme emergency of war, the telephone is as indispensable, very +nearly, as the cannon. This, at least, is the belief of the Japanese, +who handled their armies by telephone when they drove back the Russians. +Each body of Japanese troops moved forward like a silkworm, leaving +behind it a glistening strand of red copper wire. At the decisive battle +of Mukden, the silk-worm army, with a million legs, crept against the +Russian hosts in a vast crescent, a hundred miles from end to end. By +means of this glistening red wire, the various batteries and regiments +were organized into fifteen divisions. Each group of three divisions was +wired to a general, and the five generals were wired to the great Oyama +himself, who sat ten miles back of the firing-line and sent his orders. +Whenever a regiment lunged forward, one of the soldiers carried a +telephone set. If they held their position, two other soldiers ran +forward with a spool of wire. In this way and under fire of the Russian +cannon, one hundred and fifty miles of wire were strung across the +battlefield. As the Japanese said, it was this "flying telephone" that +enabled Oyama to manipulate his forces as handily as though he were +playing a game of chess. It was in this war, too, that the Mikado's +soldiers strung the costliest of all telephone lines, at 203 Metre Hill. +When the wire had been basted up this hill to the summit, the fortress +of Port Arthur lay at their mercy. But the climb had cost them +twenty-four thousand lives. + +Of the seven million telephones in the United States, about two million +are now in farmhouses. Every fourth American farmer is in telephone +touch with his neighbors and the market. Iowa leads, among the farming +States. In Iowa, not to have a telephone is to belong to what a Londoner +would call the "submerged tenth" of the population. Second in line comes +Illinois, with Kansas, Nebraska, and Indiana following closely behind; +and at the foot of the list, in the matter of farm telephones, are +Connecticut and Louisiana. + +The first farmer who discovered the value of the telephone was +the market gardener. Next came the bonanza farmer of the Red River +Valley--such a man, for instance, as Oliver Dalrymple, of North Dakota, +who found that by the aid of the telephone he could plant and harvest +thirty thousand acres of wheat in a single season. Then, not more than +half a dozen years ago, there arose a veritable Telephone Crusade among +the farmers of the Middle West. Cheap telephones, yet fairly good, +had by this time been made possible by the improvements of the Bell +engineers; and stories of what could be done by telephone became the +favorite gossip of the day. One farmer had kept his barn from being +burned down by telephoning for his neighbors; another had cleared five +hundred dollars extra profit on the sale of his cattle, by telephoning +to the best market; a third had rescued a flock of sheep by sending +quick news of an approaching blizzard; a fourth had saved his son's life +by getting an instantaneous message to the doctor; and so on. + +How the telephone saved a three million dollar fruit crop in Colorado, +in 1909, is the story that is oftenest told in the West. Until that +year, the frosts in the Spring nipped the buds. No farmer could be sure +of his harvest. But in 1909, the fruit-growers bought smudge-pots--three +hundred thousand or more. These were placed in the orchards, ready to +be lit at a moment's notice. Next, an alliance was made with the United +States Weather Bureau so that whenever the Frost King came down from the +north, a warning could be telephoned to the farmers. Just when Colorado +was pink with apple blossoms, the first warning came. "Get ready to +light up your smudge-pots in half an hour." Then the farmers telephoned +to the nearest towns: "Frost is coming; come and help us in the +orchards." Hundreds of men rushed out into the country on horseback +and in wagons. In half an hour the last warning came: "Light up; the +thermometer registers twenty-nine." The smudge-pot artillery was set +ablaze, and kept blazing until the news came that the icy forces had +retreated. And in this way every Colorado farmer who had a telephone +saved his fruit. + +In some farming States, the enthusiasm for the telephone is running so +high that mass meetings are held, with lavish oratory on the general +theme of "Good Roads and Telephones." And as a result of this Telephone +Crusade, there are now nearly twenty thousand groups of farmers, each +one with a mutual telephone system, and one-half of them with sufficient +enterprise to link their little webs of wires to the vast Bell system, +so that at least a million farmers have been brought as close to the +great cities as they are to their own barns. + +What telephones have done to bring in the present era of big crops, is +an interesting story in itself. To compress it into a sentence, we might +say that the telephone has completed the labor-saving movement which +started with the McCormick reaper in 1831. It has lifted the farmer +above the wastefulness of being his own errand-boy. The average length +of haul from barn to market in the United States is nine and a half +miles, so that every trip saved means an extra day's work for a man and +team. Instead of travelling back and forth, often to no purpose, the +farmer may now stay at home and attend to his stock and his crops. + +As yet, few farmers have learned to appreciate the value of quality in +telephone service, as they have in other lines. The same man who will +pay six prices for the best seed-corn, and who will allow nothing but +high-grade cattle in his barn, will at the same time be content with the +shabbiest and flimsiest telephone service, without offering any other +excuse than that it is cheap. But this is a transient phase of farm +telephony. The cost of an efficient farm system is now so little--not +more than two dollars a month, that the present trashy lines are certain +sooner or later to go to the junk-heap with the sickle and the flail and +all the other cheap and unprofitable things. + + + +CHAPTER VII. THE TELEPHONE AND NATIONAL EFFICIENCY + +The larger significance of the telephone is that it completes the work +of eliminating the hermit and gypsy elements of civilization. In an +almost ideal way, it has made intercommunication possible without +travel. It has enabled a man to settle permanently in one place, and yet +keep in personal touch with his fellows. + +Until the last few centuries, much of the world was probably what +Morocco is to-day--a region without wheeled vehicles or even roads of +any sort. There is a mythical story of a wonderful speaking-trumpet +possessed by Alexander the Great, by which he could call a soldier who +was ten miles distant; but there was probably no substitute for the +human voice except flags and beacon-fires, or any faster method of +travel than the gait of a horse or a camel across ungraded plains. The +first sensation of rapid transit doubtless came with the sailing vessel; +but it was the play-toy of the winds, and unreliable. When Columbus +dared to set out on his famous voyage, he was five weeks in crossing +from Spain to the West Indies, his best day's record two hundred miles. +The swift steamship travel of to-day did not begin until 1838, when the +Great Western raced over the Atlantic in fifteen days. + +As for organized systems of intercommunication, they were unknown even +under the rule of a Pericles or a Caesar. There was no post office in +Great Britain until 1656--a generation after America had begun to be +colonized. There was no English mail-coach until 1784; and when Benjamin +Franklin was Postmaster General at Philadelphia, an answer by mail from +Boston, when all went well, required not less than three weeks. There +was not even a hard-surface road in the thirteen United States until +1794; nor even a postage stamp until 1847, the year in which Alexander +Graham Bell was born. In this same year Henry Clay delivered his +memorable speech on the Mexican War, at Lexington, Kentucky, and it was +telegraphed to The New York Herald at a cost of five hundred dollars, +thus breaking all previous records for news-gathering enterprise. Eleven +years later the first cable established an instantaneous sign-language +between Americans and Europeans; and in 1876 there came the perfect +distance-talking of the telephone. + +No invention has been more timely than the telephone. It arrived at the +exact period when it was needed for the organization of great cities +and the unification of nations. The new ideas and energies of science, +commerce, and cooperation were beginning to win victories in all parts +of the earth. The first railroad had just arrived in China; the first +parliament in Japan; the first constitution in Spain. Stanley was moving +like a tiny point of light through the heart of the Dark Continent. The +Universal Postal Union had been organized in a little hall in Berne. The +Red Cross movement was twelve years old. An International Congress of +Hygiene was being held at Brussells, and an International Congress of +Medicine at Philadelphia. De Lesseps had finished the Suez Canal and +was examining Panama. Italy and Germany had recently been built into +nations; France had finally swept aside the Empire and the Commune and +established the Republic. And what with the new agencies of railroads, +steamships, cheap newspapers, cables, and telegraphs, the civilized +races of mankind had begun to be knit together into a practical +consolidation. + +To the United States, especially, the telephone came as a friend in +need. After a hundred years of growth, the Republic was still a loose +confederation of separate States, rather than one great united nation. +It had recently fallen apart for four years, with a wide gulf of blood +between; and with two flags, two Presidents, and two armies. In 1876 +it was hesitating halfway between doubt and confidence, between the old +political issues of North and South, and the new industrial issues of +foreign trade and the development of material resources. The West was +being thrown open. The Indians and buffaloes were being driven back. +There was a line of railway from ocean to ocean. The population was +gaining at the rate of a million a year. Colorado had just been +baptized as a new State. And it was still an unsolved problem whether or +not the United States could be kept united, whether or not it could be +built into an organic nation without losing the spirit of self-help and +democracy. + +It is not easy for us to realize to-day how young and primitive was the +United States of 1876. Yet the fact is that we have twice the population +that we had when the telephone was invented. We have twice the wheat +crop and twice as much money in circulation. We have three times the +railways, banks, libraries, newspapers, exports, farm values, and +national wealth. We have ten million farmers who make four times as much +money as seven million farmers made in 1876. We spend four times as +much on our public schools, and we put four times as much in the savings +bank. We have five times as many students in the colleges. And we have +so revolutionized our methods of production that we now produce seven +times as much coal, fourteen times as much oil and pig-iron, twenty-two +times as much copper, and forty-three times as much steel. + +There were no skyscrapers in 1876, no trolleys, no electric lights, no +gasoline engines, no self-binders, no bicycles, no automobiles. There +was no Oklahoma, and the combined population of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, +and Arizona was about equal to that of Des Moines. It was in this +year that General Custer was killed by the Sioux; that the flimsy iron +railway bridge fell at Ashtabula; that the "Molly Maguires" terrorized +Pennsylvania; that the first wire of the Brooklyn Bridge was strung; and +that Boss Tweed and Hell Gate were both put out of the way in New York. + +The Great Elm, under which the Revolutionary patriots had met, was still +standing on Boston Common. Daniel Drew, the New York financier, who was +born before the American Constitution was adopted, was still alive; so +were Commodore Vanderbilt, Joseph Henry, A. T. Stewart, Thurlow Weed, +Peter Cooper, Cyrus McCormick, Lucretia Mott, Bryant, Longfellow, and +Emerson. Most old people could remember the running of the first railway +train; people of middle age could remember the sending of the first +telegraph message; and the children in the high schools remembered the +laying of the first Atlantic Cable. + +The grandfathers of 1876 were fond of telling how Webster opposed taking +Texas and Oregon into the Union; how George Washington advised against +including the Mississippi River; and how Monroe warned Congress that +a country that reached from the Atlantic to the Middle West was "too +extensive to be governed but by a despotic monarchy." They told how +Abraham Lincoln, when he was postmaster of New Salem, used to carry the +letters in his coon-skin cap and deliver them at sight; how in 1822 the +mails were carried on horseback and not in stages, so as to have the +quickest possible service; and how the news of Madison's election was +three weeks in reaching the people of Kentucky. When the telegraph +was mentioned, they told how in Revolutionary days the patriots used a +system of signalling called "Washington's Tele-graph," consisting of a +pole, a flag, a basket, and a barrel. + +So, the young Republic was still within hearing distance of its +childhood, in 1876. Both in sentiment and in methods of work it +was living close to the log-cabin period. Many of the old slow ways +survived, the ways that were fast enough in the days of the stage-coach +and the tinder-box. There were seventy-seven thousand miles of railway, +but poorly built and in short lengths. There were manufacturing +industries that employed two million, four hundred thousand people, but +every trade was broken up into a chaos of small competitive units, each +at war with all the others. There were energy and enterprise in the +highest degree, but not efficiency or organization. Little as we knew +it, in 1876 we were mainly gathering together the plans and the raw +materials for the building up of the modern business world, with its +quick, tense life and its national structure of immense coordinated +industries. + +In 1876 the age of specialization and community of interest was in its +dawn. The cobbler had given place to the elaborate factory, in which +seventy men cooperated to make one shoe. The merchant who had hitherto +lived over his store now ventured to have a home in the suburbs. No man +was any longer a self-sufficient Robinson Crusoe. He was a fraction, +a single part of a social mechanism, who must necessarily keep in the +closest touch with many others. + +A new interdependent form of civilization was about to be developed, and +the telephone arrived in the nick of time to make this new civilization +workable and convenient. It was the unfolding of a new organ. Just as +the eye had become the telescope, and the hand had become machinery, and +the feet had become railways, so the voice became the telephone. It was +a new ideal method of communication that had been made indispensable by +new conditions. The prophecy of Carlyle had come true, when he said that +"men cannot now be bound to men by brass collars; you will have to bind +them by other far nobler and cunninger methods." + +Railways and steamships had begun this work of binding man to man by +"nobler and cunninger methods." The telegraph and cable had gone still +farther and put all civilized people within sight of each other, so that +they could communicate by a sort of deaf and dumb alphabet. And then +came the telephone, giving direct instantaneous communication and +putting the people of each nation within hearing distance of each +other. It was the completion of a long series of inventions. It was +the keystone of the arch. It was the one last improvement that enabled +interdependent nations to handle themselves and to hold together. + +To make railways and steamboats carry letters was much, in the evolution +of the means of communication. To make the electric wire carry signals +was more, because of the instantaneous transmission of important news. +But to make the electric wire carry speech was MOST, because it put +all fellow-citizens face to face, and made both message and answer +instantaneous. The invention of the telephone taught the Genie of +Electricity to do better than to carry mes-sages in the sign language of +the dumb. It taught him to speak. As Emerson has finely said: + + +"We had letters to send. Couriers could not go fast enough, nor far +enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in Spring, +snowdrifts in Winter, heat in Summer--could not get their horses out +of a walk. But we found that the air and the earth were full of +electricity, and always going our way, just the way we wanted to send. +WOULD HE TAKE A MESSAGE, Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; +would carry it in no time." + + +As to the exact value of the telephone to the United States in dollars +and cents, no one can tell. One statistician has given us a total of +three million dollars a day as the amount saved by using telephones. +This sum may be far too high, or too low. It can be no more than a +guess. The only adequate way to arrive at the value of the telephone +is to consider the nation as a whole, to take it all in all as a going +concern, and to note that such a nation would be absolutely impossible +without its telephone service. Some sort of a slower and lower grade +republic we might have, with small industrial units, long hours of +labor, lower wages, and clumsier ways. The money loss would be enormous, +but more serious still would be the loss in the QUALITY OF THE NATIONAL +LIFE. Inevitably, an untelephoned nation is less social, less unified, +less progressive, and less efficient. It belongs to an inferior species. + +How to make a civilization that is organized and quick, instead of +a barbarism that was chaotic and slow--that is the universal human +problem, not wholly solved to-day. And how to develop a science of +intercommunication, which commenced when the wild animals began to +travel in herds and to protect themselves from their enemies by a +language of danger-signals, and to democratize this science until the +entire nation becomes self-conscious and able to act as one living +being--that is the part of this universal problem which finally +necessitated the invention of the telephone. + +With the use of the telephone has come a new habit of mind. The slow and +sluggish mood has been sloughed off. The old to-morrow habit has been +superseded by "Do It To-day"; and life has become more tense, alert, +vivid. The brain has been relieved of the suspense of waiting for an +answer, which is a psychological gain of great importance. It receives +its reply at once and is set free to consider other matters. There is +less burden upon the memory and the WHOLE MIND can be given to each new +proposition. + +A new instinct of speed has been developed, much more fully in the +United States than elsewhere. "No American goes slow," said Ian +Maclaren, "if he has the chance of going fast; he does not stop to talk +if he can talk walking; and he does not walk if he can ride." He is as +pleased as a child with a new toy when some speed record is broken, +when a pair of shoes is made in eleven minutes, when a man lays twelve +hundred bricks in an hour, or when a ship crosses the Atlantic in +four and a half days. Even seconds are now counted and split up into +fractions. The average time, for instance, taken to reply to a telephone +call by a New York operator, is now three and two-fifth seconds; and +even this tiny atom of time is being strenuously worn down. + +As a witty Frenchman has said, one of our most lively regrets is that +while we are at the telephone we cannot do business with our feet. We +regard it as a victory over the hostility of nature when we do an hour's +work in a minute or a minute's work in a second. Instead of saying, as +the Spanish do, "Life is too short; what can one person do?" an American +is more apt to say, "Life is too short; therefore I must do to-day's +work to-day." To pack a lifetime with energy--that is the American plan, +and so to economize that energy as to get the largest results. To get +a question asked and answered in five minutes by means of an electric +wire, instead of in two hours by the slow trudging of a messenger +boy--that is the method that best suits our passion for instantaneous +service. + +It is one of the few social laws of which we are fairly sure, that +a nation organizes in proportion to its velocity. We know that a +four-mile-an-hour nation must remain a huge inert mass of peasants and +villagers; or if, after centuries of slow toil, it should pile up a +great city, the city will sooner or later fall to pieces of its own +weight. In such a way Babylon rose and fell, and Nineveh, and Thebes, +and Carthage, and Rome. Mere bulk, unorganized, becomes its own +destroyer. It dies of clogging and congestion. But when Stephenson's +Rocket ran twenty-nine miles an hour, and Morse's telegraph clicked its +signals from Washington to Baltimore, and Bell's telephone flashed the +vibrations of speech between Boston and Salem, a new era began. In came +the era of speed and the finely organized nations. In came cities of +unprecedented bulk, but held together so closely by a web-work of steel +rails and copper wires that they have become more alert and cooperative +than any tiny hamlet of mud huts on the banks of the Congo. + +That the telephone is now doing most of all, in this binding together +of all manner of men, is perhaps not too much to claim, when we remember +that there are now in the United States seventy thousand holders of Bell +telephone stock and ten million users of telephone service. There are +two hundred and sixty-four wires crossing the Mississippi, in the Bell +system; and five hundred and forty-four crossing Mason and Dixon's +Line. It is the telephone which does most to link together cottage +and skyscraper and mansion and factory and farm. It is not limited to +experts or college graduates. It reaches the man with a nickel as +well as the man with a million. It speaks all languages and serves all +trades. It helps to prevent sectionalism and race feuds. It gives +a common meeting place to capitalists and wage-workers. It is so +essentially the instrument of all the people, in fact, that we might +almost point to it as a national emblem, as the trade-mark of democracy +and the American spirit. + +In a country like ours, where there are eighty nationalities in the +public schools, the telephone has a peculiar value as a part of the +national digestive apparatus. It prevents the growth of dialects and +helps on the process of assimilation. Such is the push of American life, +that the humble immigrants from Southern Europe, before they have been +here half a dozen years, have acquired the telephone habit and +have linked on their small shops to the great wire network of +intercommunication. In the one community of Brownsville, for example, +settled several years ago by an overflow of Russian Jews from the East +Side of New York, there are now as many telephones as in the kingdom of +Greece. And in the swarming East Side itself, there is a single exchange +in Orchard Street which has more wires than there are in all the +exchanges of Egypt. + +There can be few higher ideals of practical democracy than that which +comes to us from the telephone engineer. His purpose is much more +comprehensive than the supplying of telephones to those who want them. +It is rather to make the telephone as universal as the water faucet, to +bring within speaking distance every economic unit, to connect to the +social organism every person who may at any time be needed. Just as +the click of the reaper means bread, and the purr of the sewing-machine +means clothes, and the roar of the Bessemer converter means steel, and +the rattle of the press means education, so the ring of the telephone +bell has come to mean unity and organization. + +Already, by cable, telegraph, and telephone, no two towns in the +civilized world are more than one hour apart. We have even girdled the +earth with a cablegram in twelve minutes. We have made it possible for +any man in New York City to enter into conversation with any other +New Yorker in twenty-one seconds. We have not been satisfied with +establishing such a system of transportation that we can start any day +for anywhere from anywhere else; neither have we been satisfied with +establishing such a system of communication that news and gossip are +the common property of all nations. We have gone farther. We have +established in every large region of population a system of voice-nerves +that puts every man at every other man's ear, and which so magically +eliminates the factor of distance that the United States becomes three +thousand miles of neighbors, side by side. + +This effort to conquer Time and Space is above all else the instinct +of material progress. To shrivel up the miles and to stretch out the +minutes--this has been one of the master passions of the human race. And +thus the larger truth about the telephone is that it is vastly more than +a mere convenience. It is not to be classed with safety razors and piano +players and fountain pens. It is nothing less than the high-speed tool +of civilization, gearing up the whole mechanism to more effective social +service. It is the symbol of national efficiency and cooperation. + +All this the telephone is doing, at a total cost to the nation of +probably $200,000,000 a year--no more than American farmers earn in ten +days. We pay the same price for it as we do for the potatoes, or for +one-third of the hay crop, or for one-eighth of the corn. Out of every +nickel spent for electrical service, one cent goes to the telephone. We +could settle our telephone bill, and have several millions left over, +if we cut off every fourth glass of liquor and smoke of tobacco. Whoever +rents a typewriting machine, or uses a street car twice a day, or has +his shoes polished once a day, may for the same expense have a very good +telephone service. Merely to shovel away the snow of a single storm in +1910 cost the city government of New York as much as it will pay for +five or six years of telephoning. + +This almost incredible cheapness of telephony is still far from being +generally perceived, mainly for psychological reasons. A telephone is +not impressive. It has no bulk. It is not like the Singer Building or +the Lusitania. Its wires and switchboards and batteries are scattered +and hidden, and few have sufficient imagination to picture them in all +their complexity. If only it were possible to assemble the hundred or +more telephone buildings of New York in one vast plaza, and if the two +thousand clerks and three thousand maintenance men and six thousand girl +operators were to march to work each morning with bands and banners, +then, perhaps, there might be the necessary quality of impressiveness by +which any large idea must always be imparted to the public mind. + +For lack of a seven and one-half cent coin, there is now five-cent +telephony even in the largest American cities. For five cents whoever +wishes has an entire wire-system at his service, a system that is kept +waiting by day and night, so that it will be ready the instant he needs +it. This system may have cost from twenty to fifty millions, yet it +may be hired for one-eighth the cost of renting an automobile. Even in +long-distance telephony, the expense of a message dwindles when it is +compared with the price of a return railway ticket. A talk from New +York to Philadelphia, for instance, costs seventy-five cents, while +the railway fare would be four dollars. From New York to Chicago a talk +costs five dollars as against seventy dollars by rail. As Harriman once +said, "I can't get from my home to the depot for the price of a talk to +Omaha." + +To say what the net profits have been, to the entire body of people who +have invested money in the telephone, will always be more or less of a +guess. The general belief that immense fortunes were made by the lucky +holders of Bell stock, is an exaggeration that has been kept alive by +the promoters of wildcat companies. No such fortunes were made. "I do +not believe," says Theodore Vail, "that any one man ever made a +clear million out of the telephone." There are not apt to be any +get-rich-quick for-tunes made in corporations that issue no watered +stock and do not capitalize their franchises. On the contrary, up +to 1897, the holders of stock in the Bell Companies had paid in four +million, seven hundred thousand dollars more than the par value; and in +the recent consolidation of Eastern companies, under the presidency of +Union N. Bethell, the new stock was actually eight millions less than +the stock that was retired. + +Few telephone companies paid any profits at first. They had undervalued +the cost of building and maintenance. Denver expected the cost to be two +thousand, five hundred dollars and spent sixty thousand dollars. Buffalo +expected to pay three thousand dollars and had to pay one hundred and +fifty thousand dollars. Also, they made the unwelcome discovery that an +exchange of two hundred costs more than twice as much as an exchange of +one hundred, because of the greater amount of traffic. Usually a dollar +that is paid to a telephone company is divided as follows: + + Rent............ 4c + Taxes........... 4c + Interest........ 6c + Surplus......... 8c + Maintenance.... 16c + Dividends...... 18c + Labor.......... 44c + ---- $1.00 + + +Most of the rate troubles (and their name has been legion) have arisen +because the telephone business was not understood. In fact, until +recently, it did not understand itself. It persisted in holding to +a local and individualistic view of its business. It was slow to put +telephones in unprofitable places. It expected every instrument to +pay its way. In many States, both the telephone men and the public +overlooked the most vital fact in the case, which is that the members of +a telephone system are above all else INTERDEPENDENT. + +One telephone by itself has no value. It is as useless as a reed cut +out of an organ or a finger that is severed from a hand. It is not even +ornamental or adaptable to any other pur-pose. It is not at all like a +piano or a talking-machine, which has a separate existence. It is useful +only in proportion to the number of other telephones it reaches. AND +EVERY TELEPHONE ANYWHERE ADDS VALUE TO EVERY OTHER TELEPHONE ON THE SAME +SYSTEM OF WIRES. That, in a sentence, is the keynote of equitable rates. + +Many a telephone, for the general good, must be put where it does not +earn its own living. At any time some sudden emergency may arise that +will make it for the moment priceless. Especially since the advent of +the automobile, there is no nook or corner from which it may not be +supremely necessary, now and then, to send a message. This principle +was acted upon recently in a most practical way by the Pennsylvania +Railroad, which at its own expense installed five hundred and +twenty-five telephones in the homes of its workmen in Altoona. In the +same way, it is clearly the social duty of the telephone company +to widen out its system until every point is covered, and then to +distribute its gross charges as fairly as it can. The whole must +carry the whole--that is the philosophy of rates which must finally be +recognized by legislatures and telephone companies alike. It can never, +of course, be reduced to a system or formula. It will always be a matter +of opinion and compromise, requiring much skill and much patience. But +there will seldom be any serious trouble when once its basic principles +are understood. + +Like all time-saving inventions, like the railroad, the reaper, and the +Bessemer converter, the telephone, in the last analysis, COSTS NOTHING; +IT IS THE LACK OF IT THAT COSTS. THE NATION THAT MOST IS THE NATION +WITHOUT IT. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. THE TELEPHONE IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES + +The telephone was nearly a year old before Europe was aware of its +existence. It received no public notice of any kind whatever until +March 3, 1877, when the London Athenaeum mentioned it in a few careful +sentences. It was not welcomed, except by those who wished an evening's +entertainment. And to the entire commercial world it was for four or +five years a sort of scientific Billiken, that never could be of any +service to serious people. + +One after another, several American enthusiasts rushed posthaste to +Europe, with dreams of eager nations clamoring for telephone systems, +and one after another they failed. Frederick A. Gower was the first +of these. He was an adventurous chevalier of business who gave up an +agent's contract in return for a right to become a roving propagandist. +Later he met a prima donna, fell in love with and married her, forsook +telephony for ballooning, and lost his life in attempting to fly across +the English Channel. + +Next went William H. Reynolds, of Providence, who had bought five-eights +of the British patent for five thousand dollars, and half the right +to Russia, Spain, Portugal, and Italy for two thousand, five hundred +dollars. How he was received may be seen from a letter of his which +has been preserved. "I have been working in London for four months," he +writes; "I have been to the Bank of England and elsewhere; and I have +not found one man who will put one shilling into the telephone." + +Bell himself hurried to England and Scotland on his wedding tour in +1878, with great expectations of having his invention appreciated in his +native land. But from a business point of view, his mission was a total +failure. He received dinners a-plenty, but no contracts; and came back +to the United States an impoverished and disheartened man. Then the +optimistic Gardiner G. Hubbard, Bell's father-in-law, threw himself +against the European inertia and organized the International and +Oriental Telephone Companies, which came to nothing of any importance. +In the same year even Enos M. Barton, the sagacious founder of the +Western Electric, went to France and England to establish an export +trade in telephones, and failed. + +These able men found their plans thwarted by the indifference of the +public, and often by open hostility. "The telephone is little better +than a toy," said the Saturday Review; "it amazes ignorant people for a +moment, but it is inferior to the well-established system of air-tubes." +"What will become of the privacy of life?" asked another London editor. +"What will become of the sanctity of the domestic hearth?" Writers +vied with each other in inventing methods of pooh-poohing Bell and +his invention. "It is ridiculously simple," said one. "It is only an +electrical speaking-tube," said another. "It is a complicated form +of speaking-trumpet," said a third. No British editor could at first +conceive of any use for the telephone, except for divers and coal +miners. The price, too, created a general outcry. Floods of toy +telephones were being sold on the streets at a shilling apiece; and +although the Government was charging sixty dollars a year for the use of +its printing-telegraphs, people protested loudly against paying half +as much for telephones. As late as 1882, Herbert Spencer writes: "The +telephone is scarcely used at all in London, and is unknown in the other +English cities." + +The first man of consequence to befriend the telephone was Lord Kelvin, +then an untitled young scientist. He had seen the original telephones at +the Centennial in Philadelphia, and was so fascinated with them that +the impulsive Bell had thrust them into his hands as a gift. At the next +meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, +Lord Kelvin exhibited these. He did more. He became the champion of the +telephone. He staked his reputation upon it. He told the story of the +tests made at the Centennial, and assured the sceptical scientists that +he had not been deceived. "All this my own ears heard," he said, "spoken +to me with unmistakable distinctness by this circular disc of iron." + +The scientists and electrical experts were, for the most part, split up +into two camps. Some of them said the telephone was impossible, while +others said that "nothing could be simpler." Almost all were agreed that +what Bell had done was a humorous trifle. But Lord Kelvin persisted. +He hammered the truth home that the telephone was "one of the most +interesting inventions that has ever been made in the history of +science." He gave a demonstration with one end of the wire in a coal +mine. He stood side by side with Bell at a public meeting in Glasgow, +and declared: + +"The things that were called telephones before Bell were as different +from Bell's telephone as a series of hand-claps are different from the +human voice. They were in fact electrical claps; while Bell conceived +the idea--THE WHOLLY ORIGINAL AND NOVEL IDEA--of giving continuity to +the shocks, so as to perfectly reproduce the human voice." + +One by one the scientists were forced to take the telephone seriously. +At a public test there was one noted professor who still stood in the +ranks of the doubters. He was asked to send a message. He went to the +instrument with a grin of incredulity, and thinking the whole exhibition +a joke, shouted into the mouthpiece: "Hi diddle diddle--follow up that." +Then he listened for an answer. The look on his face changed to one of +the utmost amazement. "It says--`The cat and the fiddle,'" he gasped, +and forthwith he became a convert to telephony. By such tests the men +of science were won over, and by the middle of 1877 Bell received a +"vociferous welcome" when he addressed them at their annual convention +at Plymouth. + +Soon afterwards, The London Times surrendered. It whirled +right-about-face and praised the telephone to the skies. "Suddenly and +quietly the whole human race is brought within speaking and hearing +distance," it exclaimed; "scarcely anything was more desired and more +impossible." The next paper to quit the mob of scoffers was the Tatler, +which said in an editorial peroration, "We cannot but feel im-pressed by +the picture of a human child commanding the subtlest and strongest force +in Nature to carry, like a slave, some whisper around the world." + +Closely after the scientists and editors came the nobility. The Earl of +Caithness led the way. He declared in public that "the telephone is the +most extraordinary thing I ever saw in my life." And one wintry morning +in 1878 Queen Victoria drove to the house of Sir Thomas Biddulph, in +London, and for an hour talked and listened by telephone to Kate +Field, who sat in a Downing Street office. Miss Field sang "Kathleen +Mavourneen," and the Queen thanked her by telephone, saying she was +"immensely pleased." She congratulated Bell himself, who was present, +and asked if she might be permitted to buy the two telephones; whereupon +Bell presented her with a pair done in ivory. + +This incident, as may be imagined, did much to establish the reputation +of telephony in Great Britain. A wire was at once strung to Windsor +Castle. Others were ordered by the Daily News, the Persian Ambassador, +and five or six lords and baronets. Then came an order which raised the +hopes of the telephone men to the highest heaven, from the banking house +of J. S. Morgan & Co. It was the first recognition from the "seats of +the mighty" in the business and financial world. A tiny exchange, +with ten wires, was promptly started in London; and on April 2d, 1879, +Theodore Vail, the young manager of the Bell Company, sent an order +to the factory in Boston, "Please make one hundred hand telephones for +export trade as early as possible." The foreign trade had begun. + +Then there came a thunderbolt out of a blue sky, a wholly unforeseen +disaster. Just as a few energetic companies were sprouting up, the +Postmaster General suddenly proclaimed that the telephone was a species +of telegraph. According to a British law the telegraph was required to +be a Government monopoly. This law had been passed six years before +the telephone was born, but no matter. The telephone men protested and +argued. Tyndall and Lord Kelvin warned the Government that it was making +an indefensible mistake. But nothing could be done. Just as the first +railways had been called toll-roads, so the telephone was solemnly +declared to be a telegraph. Also, to add to the absurd humor of the +situation, Judge Stephen, of the High Court of Justice, spoke the +final word that compelled the telephone legally to be a telegraph, and +sustained his opinion by a quotation from Webster's Dictionary, which +was published twenty years before the telephone was invented. + +Having captured this new rival, what next? The Postmaster General did +not know. He had, of course, no experience in telephony, and neither had +any of his officials in the telegraph department. There was no book and +no college to instruct him. His telegraph was then, as it is to-day, a +business failure. It was not earning its keep. Therefore he did not dare +to shoulder the risk of constructing a second system of wires, and at +last consented to give licenses to private companies. + +But the muddle continued. In order to compel competition, according +to the academic theories of the day, licenses were given to thir-teen +private companies. As might have been expected, the ablest company +quickly swallowed the other twelve. If it had been let alone, this +company might have given good service, but it was hobbled and fenced in +by jealous regulations. It was compelled to pay one-tenth of its gross +earnings to the Post Office. It was to hold itself ready to sell out at +six months' notice. And as soon as it had strung a long-distance system +of wires, the Postmaster General pounced down upon it and took it away. + +Then, in 1900, the Post Office tossed aside all obligations to the +licensed company, and threw open the door to a free-for-all competition. +It undertook to start a second system in London, and in two years +discovered its blunder and proposed to cooperate. It granted licenses +to five cities that demanded municipal ownership. These cities set out +bravely, with loud beating of drums, plunged from one mishap to another, +and finally quit. Even Glasgow, the premier city of municipal ownership, +met its Waterloo in the telephone. It spent one million, eight hundred +thousand dollars on a plant that was obsolete when it was new, ran it +for a time at a loss, and then sold it to the Post Office in 1906 for +one million, five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. + +So, from first to last, the story of the telephone in Great Britain has +been a "comedy of errors." There are now, in the two islands, not six +hundred thousand telephones in use. London, with its six hundred and +forty square miles of houses, has one-quarter of these, and is gaining +at the rate of ten thousand a year. No large improvements are under way, +as the Post Office has given notice that it will take over and operate +all private companies on New Year's Day, 1912. The bureaucratic muddle, +so it seems, is to continue indefinitely. + +In Germany there has been the same burden of bureaucracy, but less +backing and filling. There is a complete government monopoly. Whoever +commits the crime of leasing telephone service to his neighbors may be +sent to jail for six months. Here, too, the Postmaster General has been +supreme. He has forced the telephone business into a postal mould. The +man in a small city must pay as high a rate for a small service, as the +man in a large city pays for a large service. There is a fair degree of +efficiency, but no high speed or record-breaking. The German engineers +have not kept in close touch with the progress of telephony in the +United States. They have preferred to devise methods of their own, and +so have created a miscellaneous assortment of systems, good, bad, and +indifferent. All told, there is probably an investment of seventy-five +million dollars and a total of nine hundred thousand telephones. + +Telephony has always been in high favor with the Kaiser. It is his +custom, when planning a hunting party, to have a special wire strung to +the forest headquarters, so that he can converse every morning with +his Cabinet. He has conferred degrees and honors by telephone. Even +his former Chancellor, Von Buelow, received his title of Count in this +informal way. But the first friend of the telephone in Germany was +Bismarck. The old Unifier saw instantly its value in holding a nation +together, and ordered a line between his palace in Berlin and his farm +at Varzin, which lay two hundred and thirty miles apart. This was as +early as the Fall of 1877, and was thus the first long-distance line in +Europe. + +In France, as in England, the Government seized upon the telephone +business as soon as the pioneer work had been done by private citizens. +In 1889 it practically confiscated the Paris system, and after nine +years of litigation paid five million francs to its owners. With this +reckless beginning, it floundered from bad to worse. It assembled +the most complete assortment of other nations' mistakes, and invented +several of its own. Almost every known evil of bureaucracy was +developed. The system of rates was turned upside down; the flat rate, +which can be profitably permitted in small cities only, was put in force +in the large cities, and the message rate, which is applicable only to +large cities, was put in force in small places. The girl operators were +entangled in a maze of civil service rules. They were not allowed +to marry without the permission of the Postmaster General; and on no +account might they dare to marry a mayor, a policeman, a cashier, or a +foreigner, lest they betray the secrets of the switchboard. + +There was no national plan, no standardization, no staff of inventors +and improvers. Every user was required to buy his own telephone. As +George Ade has said, "Anything attached to a wall is liable to be a +telephone in Paris." And so, what with poor equipment and red tape, +the French system became what it remains to-day, the most conspicuous +example of what NOT to do in telephony. + +There are barely as many telephones in the whole of France as ought +normally to be in the city of Paris. There are not as many as are now +in use in Chicago. The exasperated Parisians have protested. They have +presented a petition with thirty-two thousand names. They have even +organized a "Kickers' League"--the only body of its kind in any +country--to demand good service at a fair price. The daily loss from +bureaucratic telephony has become enormous. "One blundering girl in a +telephone exchange cost me five thousand dollars on the day of the panic +in 1907," said George Kessler. But the Government clears a net profit +of three million dollars a year from its telephone monopoly; and until +1910, when a committee of betterment was appointed, it showed no concern +at the discomfort of the public. + +There was one striking lesson in telephone efficiency which Paris +received in 1908, when its main exchange was totally destroyed by fire. +"To build a new switchboard," said European manufacturers, "will require +four or five months." A hustling young Chicagoan appeared on the scene. +"We 'll put in a new switchboard in sixty days," he said; "and agree to +forfeit six hundred dollars a day for delay." Such quick work had never +been known. But it was Chicago's chance to show what she could do. Paris +and Chicago are four thousand, five hundred miles apart, a twelve days' +journey. The switchboard was to be a hundred and eighty feet in length, +with ten thousand wires. Yet the Western Electric finished it in three +weeks. It was rushed on six freight-cars to New York, loaded on the +French steamer La Provence, and deposited at Paris in thirty-six days; +so that by the time the sixty days had expired, it was running full +speed with a staff of ninety operators. + +Russia and Austria-Hungary have now about one hundred and twenty-five +thousand telephones apiece. They are neck and neck in a race that has +not at any time been a fast one. In each country the Government has been +a neglectful stepmother to the telephone. It has starved the business +with a lack of capital and used no enterprise in expanding it. +Outside of Vienna, Budapest, St. Petersburg, and Moscow there are no +wire-systems of any consequence. The political deadlock between Austria +and Hungary shuts out any immediate hope of a happier life for the +telephone in those countries; but in Russia there has recently been +a change in policy that may open up a new era. Permits are now being +offered to one private company in each city, in return for three per +cent of the revenue. By this step Russia has unexpectedly swept to the +front and is now, to telephone men, the freest country in Europe. + +In tiny Switzerland there has been government ownership from the +first, but with less detriment to the business than elsewhere. Here the +officials have actually jilted the telegraph for the telephone. They +have seen the value of the talking wire to hold their valley villages +together; and so have cries-crossed the Alps with a cheap and somewhat +flimsy system of telephony that carries sixty million conversations a +year. Even the monks of St. Bernard, who rescue snowbound travellers, +have now equipped their mountain with a series of telephone booths. + +The highest telephone in the world is on the peak of Monte Rosa, in the +Italian Alps, very nearly three miles above the level of the sea. It is +linked to a line that runs to Rome, in order that a queen may talk to +a professor. In this case the Queen is Margherita of Italy and the +professor is Signor Mosso, the astronomer, who studies the heavens from +an observatory on Monte Rosa. At her own expense, the Queen had this +wire strung by a crew of linemen, who slipped and floundered on the +mountain for six years before they had it pegged in place. The general +situation in Italy is like that in Great Britain. The Government has +always monopolized the long-distance lines, and is now about to buy out +all private companies. There are only fifty-five thousand telephones +to thirty-two million people--as many as in Norway and less than in +Denmark. And in many of the southern and Sicilian provinces the jingle +of the telephone bell is still an unfamiliar sound. + +The main peculiarity in Holland is that there is no national plan, but +rather a patchwork, that resembles Joseph's coat of many colors. Each +city engineer has designed his own type of apparatus and had it made to +order. Also, each company is fenced in by law within a six-mile circle, +so that Holland is dotted with thumb-nail systems, no two of which are +alike. In Belgium there has been a government system since 1893, hence +there is unity, but no enterprise. The plant is old-fashioned and too +small. Spain has private companies, which give fairly good service to +twenty thousand people. Roumania has half as many. Portugal has two +small companies in Lisbon and Oporto. Greece, Servia, and Bulgaria have +a scanty two thousand apiece. The frozen little isle of Iceland has +one-quarter as many; and even into Turkey, which was a forbidden land +under the regime of the old Sultan, the Young Turks are importing boxes +of telephones and coils of copper wire. + +There is one European country, and only one, which has caught the +telephone spirit--Sweden. Here telephony had a free swinging start. +It was let alone by the Post Office; and better still, it had a Man, a +business-builder of remarkable force and ability, named Henry Cedergren. +Had this man been made the Telephone-Master of Europe, there would have +been a different story to tell. By his insistent enterprise he made +Stockholm the best telephoned city outside of the United States. He +pushed his country forward until, having one hundred and sixty-five +thousand telephones, it stood fourth among the European nations. Since +his death the Government has entered the field with a duplicate system, +and a war has been begun which grows yearly more costly and absurd. + +Asia, as yet, with her eight hundred and fifty million people, has fewer +telephones than Philadelphia, and three-fourths of them are in the tiny +island of Japan. The Japanese were enthusiastic telephonists from the +first. They had a busy exchange in Tokio in 1883. This has now grown to +have twenty-five thousand users, and might have more, if it had not been +stunted by the peculiar policy of the Government. The public officials +who operate the system are able men. They charge a fair price and make +ten per cent profit for the State. But they do not keep pace with the +demand. It is one of the oddest vagaries of public ownership that there +is now in Tokio a WAITING LIST of eight thousand citizens, who are +offering to pay for telephones and cannot get them. And when a Tokian +dies, his franchise to a telephone, if he has one, is usually itemized +in his will as a four-hundred-dollar property. + +India, which is second on the Asiatic list, has no more than nine +thousand telephones--one to every thirty-three thousand of her +population! Not quite so many, in fact, as there are in five of the +skyscrapers of New York. The Dutch East Indies and China have only +seven thousand apiece, but in China there has recently come a +forward movement. A fund of twenty million dollars is to be spent in +constructing a national system of telephone and telegraph. Peking is now +pointing with wonder and delight to a new exchange, spick and span, with +a couple of ten-thousand-wire switchboards. Others are being built in +Canton, Hankow, and Tien-Tsin. Ultimately, the telephone will flourish +in China, as it has done in the Chinese quarter in San Francisco. The +Empress of China, after the siege of Peking, commanded that a telephone +should be hung in her palace, within reach of her dragon throne; and +she was very friendly with any representative of the "Speaking Lightning +Sounds" business, as the Chinese term telephony. + +In Persia the telephone made its entry recently in true comic-opera +fashion. A new Shah, in an outburst of confidence, set up a wire between +his palace and the market-place in Teheran, and invited his people to +talk to him whenever they had grievances. And they talked! They talked +so freely and used such language, that the Shah ordered out his soldiers +and attacked them. He fired upon the new Parliament, and was at once +chased out of Persia by the enraged people. From this it would appear +that the telephone ought to be popular in Persia, although at present +there are not more than twenty in use. + +South America, outside of Buenos Ayres, has few telephones, probably not +more than thirty thousand. Dom Pedro of Brazil, who befriended Bell at +the Centennial, introduced telephony into his country in 1881; but it +has not in thirty years been able to obtain ten thousand users. Canada +has exactly the same number as Sweden--one hundred and sixty-five +thousand. Mexico has perhaps ten thousand; New Zealand twenty-six +thousand; and Australia fifty-five thousand. + +Far down in the list of continents stands Africa. Egypt and Algeria have +twelve thousand at the north; British South Africa has as many at the +south; and in the vast stretches between there are barely a thousand +more. Whoever pushes into Central Africa will still hear the beat of the +wooden drum, which is the clattering sign-language of the natives. One +strand of copper wire there is, through the Congo region, placed there +by order of the late King of Belgium. To string it was probably the most +adventurous piece of work in the history of telephone linemen. There was +one seven hundred and fifty mile stretch of the central jungle. There +were white ants that ate the wooden poles, and wild elephants that +pulled up the iron poles. There were monkeys that played tag on the +lines, and savages that stole the wire for arrow-heads. But the line +was carried through, and to-day is alive with conversations concerning +rubber and ivory. + +So, we may almost say of the telephone that "there is no speech nor +language where its voice is not heard." There are even a thousand miles +of its wire in Abyssinia and one hundred and fifty miles in the Fiji +Islands. Roughly speaking, there are now ten million telephones in all +countries, employing two hundred and fifty thousand people, requiring +twenty-one million miles of wire, representing a cost of fifteen hundred +million dollars, and carrying fourteen thousand million conversations +a year. All this, and yet the men who heard the first feeble cry of the +infant telephone are still alive, and not by any means old. + +No foreign country has reached the high American level of telephony. The +United States has eight telephones per hundred of population, while no +other country has one-half as many. Canada stands second, with almost +four per hundred; and Sweden is third. Germany has as many telephones +as the State of New York; and Great Britain as many as Ohio. Chicago +has more than London; and Boston twice as many as Paris. In the whole of +Europe, with her twenty nations, there are one-third as many telephones +as in the United States. In proportion to her population, Europe has +only one-thirteenth as many. + +The United States writes half as many letters as Europe, sends one-third +as many telegrams, and talks twice as much at the telephone. The average +European family sends three telegrams a year, and three letters and one +telephone message a week; while the average American family sends five +telegrams a year, and seven letters and eleven telephone messages a +week. This one na-tion, which owns six per cent of the earth and is five +per cent of the human race, has SEVENTY per cent of the telephones. +And fifty per cent, or one-half, of the telephony of the world, is now +comprised in the Bell System of this country. + +There are only six nations in Europe that make a fair showing--the +Germans, British, Swedish, Danes, Norwegians, and Swiss. The others +have less than one telephone per hundred. Little Denmark has more than +Austria. Little Finland has better service than France. The Belgian +telephones have cost the most--two hundred and seventy-three dollars +apiece; and the Finnish telephones the least--eighty-one dollars. But +a telephone in Belgium earns three times as much as one in Norway. In +general, the lesson in Europe is this, that the telephone is what a +nation makes it. Its usefulness depends upon the sense and enterprise +with which it is handled. It may be either an invaluable asset or a +nuisance. + +Too much government! That has been the basic reason for failure in most +countries. Before the telephone was invented, the telegraph had been +made a State monopoly; and the tele-phone was regarded as a species of +telegraph. The public officials did not see that a telephone system is a +highly complex and technical problem, much more like a piano factory +or a steel-mill. And so, wherever a group of citizens established a +telephone service, the government officials looked upon it with jealous +eyes, and usually snatched it away. The telephone thus became a part of +the telegraph, which is a part of the post office, which is a part of +the government. It is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction--a mere +twig of bureaucracy. Under such conditions the telephone could not +prosper. The wonder is that it survived. + +Handled on the American plan, the telephone abroad may be raised to +American levels. There is no racial reason for failure. The slow service +and the bungling are the natural results of treating the telephone as +though it were a road or a fire department; and any nation that rises +to a proper conception of the telephone, that dares to put it into +competent hands and to strengthen it with enough capital, can secure as +alert and brisk a service as heart can wish. Some nations are already +on the way. China, Japan, and France have sent delegations to New York +City--"the Mecca of telephone men," to learn the art of telephony in +its highest development. Even Russia has rescued the telephone from her +bureaucrats and is now offering it freely to men of enterprise. + +In most foreign countries telephone service is being steadily geared up +to a faster pace. The craze for "cheap and nasty" telephony is passing; +and the idea that the telephone is above all else a SPEED instrument, +is gaining ground. A faster long-distance service, at double rates, is +being well patronized. Slow-moving races are learning the value of time, +which is the first lesson in telephony. Our reapers and mowers now go to +seventy-five nations. Our street cars run in all great cities. Morocco +is importing our dollar watches; Korea is learning the waste of allowing +nine men to dig with one spade. And all this means telephones. + +In thirty years, the Western Electric has sold sixty-seven million +dollars' worth of telephonic apparatus to foreign countries. But this +is no more than a fair beginning. To put one telephone in China to every +hundred people will mean an outlay of three hundred million dollars. To +give Europe as fit an equipment as the United States now has, will mean +thirty million telephones, with proper wire and switchboards to match. +And while telephony for the masses is not yet a live question in many +countries, sooner or later, in the relentless push of civilization, it +must come. + +Possibly, in that far future of peace and goodwill among nations, when +each country does for all the others what it can do best, the United +States may be generally recognized as the source of skill and authority +on telephony. It may be called in to rebuild or operate the telephone +systems of other countries, in the same way that it is now supplying +oil and steel rails and farm machinery. Just as the wise buyer of to-day +asks France for champagne, Germany for toys, England for cottons, and +the Orient for rugs, so he will learn to look upon the United States as +the natural home and headquarters of the telephone. + + + +CHAPTER IX. THE FUTURE OF THE TELEPHONE + +In the Spring of 1907 Theodore N. Vail, a rugged, ruddy, white-haired +man, was superintending the building of a big barn in northern Vermont. +His house stood near-by, on a balcony of rolling land that overlooked +the town of Lyndon and far beyond, across evergreen forests to the +massive bulk of Burke Mountain. His farm, very nearly ten square miles +in area, lay back of the house in a great oval of field and woodland, +with several dozen cottages in the clearings. His Welsh ponies and Swiss +cattle were grazing on the May grass, and the men were busy with the +ploughs and harrows and seeders. It was almost thirty years since he +had been called in to create the business structure of telephony, and to +shape the general plan of its development. Since then he had done many +other things. The one city of Buenos Ayres had paid him more, merely +for giving it a system of trolleys and electric lights, than the United +States had paid him for putting the telephone on a business basis. He +was now rich and retired, free to enjoy his play-work of the farm and to +forget the troubles of the city and the telephone. + +But, as he stood among his barn-builders, there arrived from Boston and +New York a delegation of telephone directors. Most of them belonged to +the "Old Guard" of telephony. They had fought under Vail in the pioneer +days; and now they had come to ask him to return to the telephone +business, after twenty years of absence. Vail laughed at the suggestion. + +"Nonsense," he said, "I'm too old. I'm sixty-two years of age." The +directors persisted. They spoke of the approaching storm-cloud of panic +and the need of another strong hand at the wheel until the crisis was +over, but Vail still refused. They spoke of old times and old memories, +but he shook his head. "All my life," he said, "I have wanted to be a +farmer." + +Then they drew a picture of the telephone situation. They showed him +that the "grand telephonic system" which he had planned was unfinished. +He was its architect, and it was undone. The telephone business was +energetic and prosperous. Under the brilliant leadership of Frederick P. +Fish, it had grown by leaps and bounds. But it was still far from being +the SYSTEM that Vail had dreamed of in his younger days; and so, when +the directors put before him his unfinished plan, he surrendered. +The instinct for completeness, which is one of the dominating +characteristics of his mind, compelled him to consent. It was the call +of the telephone. + +Since that May morning, 1907, great things have been done by the men of +the telephone and telegraph world. The Bell System was brought through +the panic without a scratch. When the doubt and confusion were at their +worst, Vail wrote an open letter to his stock-holders, in his practical, +farmer-like way. He said: + +"Our net earnings for the last ten months were $13,715,000, as against +$11,579,000 for the same period in 1906. We have now in the banks over +$18,000,000; and we will not need to borrow any money for two years." + +Soon afterwards, the work of consolidation began. Companies that +overlapped were united. Small local wire-clusters, several thousands +of them, were linked to the national lines. A policy of publicity +superseded the secrecy which had naturally grown to be a habit in the +days of patent litigation. Visitors and reporters found an open door. +Educational advertisements were published in the most popular magazines. +The corps of inventors was spurred up to conquer the long-distance +problems. And in return for a thirty million check, the control of the +historic Western Union was transferred from the children of Jay Gould +to the thirty thousand stock-holders of the American Telephone and +Telegraph Company. + +From what has been done, therefore, we may venture a guess as to the +future of the telephone. This "grand telephonic system" which had no +existence thirty years ago, except in the imagination of Vail, seems to +be at hand. The very newsboys in the streets are crying it. And while +there is, of course, no exact blueprint of a best possible telephone +system, we can now see the general outlines of Vail's plan. + +There is nothing mysterious or ominous in this plan. It has nothing +to do with the pools and conspiracies of Wall Street. No one will be +squeezed out except the promoters of paper companies. The simple fact is +that Vail is organizing a complete Bell System for the same reason that +he built one big comfortable barn for his Swiss cattle and his Welsh +ponies, instead of half a dozen small uncomfortable sheds. He has never +been a "high financier" to juggle profits out of other men's losses. He +is merely applying to the telephone business the same hard sense that +any farmer uses in the management of his farm. He is building a Big +Barn, metaphorically, for the telephone and telegraph. + +Plainly, the telephone system of the future will be national, so that +any two people in the same country will be able to talk to one another. +It will not be competitive, for the reason that no farmer would think +for a moment of running his farm on competitive lines. It will have +a staff-and-line organization, to use a military phrase. Each local +company will continue to handle its own local affairs, and exercise to +the full the basic virtue of self-help. But there will also be, as now, +a central body of experts to handle the larger affairs that are common +to all companies. No separateness or secession on the one side, nor +bureaucracy on the other--that is the typically American idea that +underlies the ideal telephone system. + +The line of authority, in such a system, will begin with the local +manager. From him it will rise to the directors of the State company; +then higher still to the directors of the national company; and finally, +above all corporate leaders to the Federal Government itself. The +failure of government ownership of the telephone in so many foreign +countries does not mean that the private companies will have absolute +power. Quite the reverse. The lesson of thirty years' experience shows +that a private telephone company is apt to be much more obedient to the +will of the people than if it were a Government department. But it is +an axiom of democracy that no company, however well conducted, will be +permitted to control a public convenience without being held strictly +responsible for its own acts. As politics becomes less of a game and +more of a responsibility, the telephone of the future will doubtless be +supervised by some sort of public committee, which will have power to +pass upon complaints, and to prevent the nuisance of duplication and the +swindle of watering stock. + +As this Federal supervision becomes more and more efficient, the present +fear of monopoly will decrease, just as it did in the case of the +railways. It is a fact, although now generally forgotten, that the +first railways of the United States were run for ten years or more on +an anti-monopoly plan. The tracks were free to all. Any one who owned +a cart with flanged wheels could drive it on the rails and compete with +the locomotives. There was a happy-go-lucky jumble of trains and wagons, +all held back by the slowest team; and this continued on some railways +until as late as 1857. By that time the people saw that com-petition on +a railway track was absurd. They allowed each track to be monopolized by +one company, and the era of expansion began. + +No one, certainly, at the present time, regrets the passing of the +independent teamster. He was much more arbitrary and expensive than +any railroad has ever dared to be; and as the country grew, he became +impossible. He was not the fittest to survive. For the general good, he +was held back from competing with the railroad, and taught to cooperate +with it by hauling freight to and from the depots. This, to his +surprise, he found much more profitable and pleasant. He had been +squeezed out of a bad job into a good one. And by a similar process of +evolution, the United States is rapidly outgrowing the small independent +telephone companies. These will eventually, one by one, rise as the +teamster did to a higher social value, by clasping wires with the main +system of telephony. + +Until 1881 the Bell System was in the hands of a family group. It was +a strictly private enterprise. The public had been asked to help in its +launching, and had refused. But after 1881 it passed into the control of +the small stock-holders, and has remained there without a break. It is +now one of our most democratized businesses, scattering either wages or +dividends into more than a hundred thousand homes. It has at times been +exclusive, but never sordid. It has never been dollar-mad, nor frenzied +by the virus of stock-gambling. There has always been a vein of +sentiment in it that kept it in touch with human nature. Even at the +present time, each check of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company +carries on it a picture of a pretty Cupid, sitting on a chair upon which +he has placed a thick book, and gayly prattling into a telephone. + +Several sweeping changes may be expected in the near future, now that +there is team-play between the Bell System and the Western Union. +Already, by a stroke of the pen, five million users of telephones +have been put on the credit books of the Western Union; and every Bell +telephone office is now a telegraph office. Three telephone messages and +eight telegrams may be sent AT THE SAME TIME over two pairs of wires: +that is one of the recent miracles of science, and is now to be tried +out upon a gigantic scale. Most of the long-distance telephone wires, +fully two million miles, can be used for telegraphic purposes; and a +third of the Western Union wires, five hundred thousand miles, may with +a few changes be used for talking. + +The Western Union is paying rent for twenty-two thousand, five hundred +offices, all of which helps to make telegraphy a luxury of the few. It +is employing as large a force of messenger-boys as the army that marched +with General Sherman from Atlanta to the sea. Both of these items of +expense will dwindle when a Bell wire and a Morse wire can be brought to +a common terminal; and when a telegram can be received or delivered by +telephone. There will also be a gain, perhaps the largest of all, in +removing the trudging little messenger-boy from the streets and sending +him either to school or to learn some useful trade. + +The fact is that the United States is the first country that has +succeeded in putting both telephone and telegraph upon the proper basis. + +Elsewhere either the two are widely apart, or the telephone is a mere +adjunct of a telegraphic department. According to the new American plan, +the two are not competitive, but complementary. The one is a supplement +to the other. The post office sends a package; the telegraph sends +the contents of the package; but the telephone sends nothing. It is an +apparatus that makes conversation possible between two separated people. +Each of the three has a distinct field of its own, so that there has +never been any cause for jealousy among them. + +To make the telephone an annex of the post office or the telegraph has +become absurd. There are now in the whole world very nearly as many +messages sent by telephone as by letter; and there are THIRTY-TWO +TIMES as many telephone calls as telegrams. In the United States, the +telephone has grown to be the big brother of the telegraph. It has six +times the net earnings and eight times the wire. And it transmits as +many messages as the combined total of telegrams, letters, and railroad +passengers. + +This universal trend toward consolidation has introduced a variety of +problems that will engage the ablest brains in the telephone world for +many years to come. How to get the benefits of organization without its +losses, to become strong without losing quickness, to become systematic +without losing the dash and dare of earlier days, to develop the +working force into an army of high-speed specialists without losing the +bird's-eye view of the whole situation,--these are the riddles of the +new type, for which the telephonists of the next generation must +find the answers. They illustrate the nature of the big jobs that the +telephone has to offer to an ambitious and gifted young man of to-day. + +"The problems never were as large or as complex as they are right now," +says J. J. Carty, the chief of the telephone engineers. The eternal +struggle remains between the large and little ideas--between the men who +see what might be and the men who only see what IS. There is still the +race to break records. Already the girl at the switchboard can find the +person wanted in thirty seconds. This is one-tenth of the time that was +taken in the early centrals; but it is still too long. It is one-half of +a valuable minute. It must be cut to twenty-five seconds, or twenty or +fifteen. + +There is still the inventors' battle to gain miles. The distance over +which conversations can be held has been increased from twenty miles +to twenty-five hundred. But this is not far enough. There are some +civilized human beings who are twelve thousand miles apart, and who have +interests in common. During the Boxer Rebellion in China, for instance, +there were Americans in Peking who would gladly have given half of their +fortune for the use of a pair of wires to New York. + +In the earliest days of the telephone, Bell was fond of prophesying that +"the time will come when we will talk across the Atlantic Ocean"; but +this was regarded as a poetical fancy until Pupin invented his method +of automatically propelling the electric current. Since then the +most conservative engineer will discuss the problem of transatlantic +telephony. And as for the poets, they are now dreaming of the time +when a man may speak and hear his own voice come back to him around the +world. + +The immediate long-distance problem is, of course, to talk from New York +to the Pacific. The two oceans are now only three and a half days apart +by rail. Seattle is clamoring for a wire to the East. San Diego wants +one in time for her Panama Canal Exposition in 1915. The wires are +already strung to San Francisco, but cannot be used in the present stage +of the art. And Vail's captains are working now with almost breathless +haste to give him a birthday present of a talk across the continent from +his farm in Vermont. + +"I can see a universal system of telephony for the United States in the +very near future," says Carty. "There is a statue of Seward standing in +one of the streets of Seattle. The inscription upon it is, `To a United +Country.' But as an Easterner stands there, he feels the isolation of +that Far Western State, and he will always feel it, until he can +talk from one side of the United States to the other. For my part," +continues Carty, "I believe we will talk across continents and across +oceans. Why not? Are there not more cells in one human body than there +are people in the whole earth?" + +Some future Carty may solve the abandoned problem of the single wire, +and cut the copper bill in two by restoring the grounded circuit. He may +transmit vision as well as speech. He may perfect a third-rail system +for use on moving trains. He may conceive of an ideal insulating +material to supersede glass, mica, paper, and enamel. He may establish +a universal code, so that all persons of importance in the United States +shall have call-numbers by which they may instantly be located, as books +are in a library. + +Some other young man may create a commercial department on wide lines, a +work which telephone men have as yet been too specialized to do. Whoever +does this will be a man of comprehensive brain. He will be as closely +in touch with the average man as with the art of telephony. He will +know the gossip of the street, the demands of the labor unions, and the +policies of governors and presidents. The psychology of the Western +farmer will concern him, and the tone of the daily press, and the +methods of department stores. It will be his aim to know the subtle +chemistry of public opinion, and to adapt the telephone service to the +shifting moods and necessities of the times. HE WILL FIT TELEPHONY LIKE +A GARMENT AROUND THE HABITS OF THE PEOPLE. + +Also, now that the telephone business has become strong, its next +anxiety must be to develop the virtues, and not the defects, of +strength. Its motto must be "Ich dien"--I serve; and it will be the work +of the future statesmen of the telephone to illustrate this motto in all +its practical variations. They will cater and explain, and explain and +cater. They will educate and educate, until they have created an expert +public. They will teach by pictures and lectures and exhibitions. They +will have charts and diagrams hung in the telephone booths, so that the +person who is waiting for a call may learn a little and pass the time +more pleasantly. They will, in a word, attend to those innumerable +trifles that make the perfection of public service. + +Already the Bell System has gone far in this direction by organizing +what might fairly be called a foresight department. Here is where the +fortune-tellers of the business sit. When new lines or exchanges are to +be built, these men study the situation with an eye to the future. They +prepare a "fundamental plan," outlining what may reasonably be expected +to happen in fifteen or twenty years. Invariably they are optimists. +They make provision for growth, but none at all for shrinkage. By their +advice, there is now twenty-five million dollars' worth of reserve plant +in the various Bell Companies, waiting for the country to grow up to it. +Even in the city of New York, one-half of the cable ducts are empty, +in expectation of the greater city of eight million population which +is scheduled to arrive in 1928. There are perhaps few more impressive +evidences of practical optimism and confidence than a new telephone +exchange, with two-thirds of its wires waiting for the business of the +future. + +Eventually, this foresight department will expand. It may, if a leader +of genius appear, become the first real corps of practical sociologists, +which will substitute facts for the present hotch-potch of theories. It +will prepare a "fundamental plan" of the whole United States, showing +the centre of each industry and the main runways of traffic. It will +act upon the basic fact that WHEREVER THERE IS INTERDEPENDENCE, THERE +IS BOUND TO BE TELEPHONY; and it will therefore prepare maps of +interdependence, showing the widely scattered groups of industry and +finance, and the lines that weave them into a pattern of national +cooperation. + +As yet, no nation, not even our own, has seen the full value of the +long-distance telephone. Few have the imagination to see what has been +made possible, and to realize that an actual face-to-face conversation +may take place, even though there be a thousand miles between. Neither +can it seem credible that a man in a distant city may be located as +readily as though he were close at hand. It is too amazing to be true, +and possibly a new generation will have to arrive before it will be +taken for granted and acted upon freely. Ultimately, there can be no +doubt that long-distance telephony will be regarded as a national asset +of the highest value, for the reason that it can prevent so much of the +enormous economic waste of travel. + +Nothing that science can say will ever decrease the marvel of a +long-distance conversation, and there may come in the future +an Interpreter who will put it before our eyes in the form of a +moving-picture. He will enable us to follow the flying words in a talk +from Boston to Denver. We will flash first to Worcester, cross the +Hudson on the high bridge at Poughkeepsie, swing southwest through +a dozen coal towns to the outskirts of Philadelphia, leap across +the Susquehanna, zigzag up and down the Alleghenies into the murk +of Pittsburg, cross the Ohio at Wheeling, glance past Columbus and +Indianapolis, over the Wabash at Terre Haute, into St. Louis by the Eads +bridge, through Kansas City, across the Missouri, along the corn-fields +of Kansas, and then on--on--on with the Sante Fe Railway, across vast +plains and past the brink of the Grand Canyon, to Pueblo and the lofty +city of Denver. Twenty-five hundred miles along a thousand tons of +copper wire! From Bunker Hill to Pike's Peak IN A SECOND! + +Herbert Spencer, in his autobiography, alludes to the impressive fact +that while the eye is reading a single line of type, the earth has +travelled thirty miles through space. But this, in telephony, would be +slow travelling. It is simple everyday truth to say that while your eye +is reading this dash,--, a telephone sound can be carried from New York +to Chicago. + +There are many reasons to believe that for the practical idealists of +the future, the supreme study will be the force that makes such miracles +possible. Six thousand million dollars--one-twentieth of our national +wealth--is at the present time invested in electrical development. The +Electrical Age has not yet arrived; but it is at hand; and no one can +tell how brilliant the result may be, when the creative minds of a +nation are focussed upon the subdual of this mysterious force, which has +more power and more delicacy than any other force that man has been able +to harness. + +As a tame and tractable energy, Electricity is new. It has no past and +no pedigree. It is younger than many people who are now alive. Among the +wise men of Greece and Rome, few knew its existence, and none put it to +any practical use. The wisest knew that a piece of amber, when rubbed, +will attract feathery substances. But they regarded this as poetry +rather than science. There was a pretty legend among the Phoenicians +that the pieces of amber were the petrified tears of maidens who had +thrown themselves into the sea because of unrequited love, and each bead +of amber was highly prized. It was worn as an amulet and a symbol of +purity. Not for two thousand years did any one dream that within its +golden heart lay hidden the secret of a new electrical civilization. + +Not even in 1752, when Benjamin Franklin flew his famous kite on the +banks of the Schuylkill River, and captured the first CANNED LIGHTNING, +was there any definite knowledge of electrical energy. His lightning-rod +was regarded as an insult to the deity of Heaven. It was blamed for +the earthquake of 1755. And not until the telegraph of Morse came into +general use, did men dare to think of the thunder-bolt of Jove as a +possible servant of the human race. + +Thus it happened that when Bell invented the telephone, he surprised the +world with a new idea. He had to make the thought as well as the thing. +No Jules Verne or H. G. Wells had foreseen it. The author of the Arabian +Nights fantasies had conceived of a flying carpet, but neither he nor +any one else had conceived of flying conversation. In all the literature +of ancient days, there is not a line that will apply to the telephone, +except possibly that expressive phrase in the Bible, "And there came +a voice." In these more privileged days, the telephone has come to +be regarded as a commonplace fact of everyday life; and we are apt to +forget that the wonder of it has become greater and not less; and that +there are still honor and profit, plenty of both, to be won by the +inventor and the scientist. + +The flood of electrical patents was never higher than now. There are +literally more in a single month than the total number issued by the +Patent Office up to 1859. The Bell System has three hundred experts who +are paid to do nothing else but try out all new ideas and inventions; +and before these words can pass into the printed book, new uses and +new methods will have been discovered. There is therefore no immediate +danger that the art of telephony will be less fascinating in the future +than it has been in the past. It will still be the most alluring +and elusive sprite that ever led the way through a Dark Continent of +mysterious phenomena. + +There still remains for some future scientist the task of showing us in +detail exactly what the telephone current does. Such a man will study +vibrations as Darwin studied the differentiation of species. He will +investigate how a child's voice, speaking from Boston to Omaha, can +vibrate more than a million pounds of copper wire; and he will invent +a finer system of time to fit the telephone, which can do as many +different things in a second as a man can do in a day, transmitting with +every tick of the clock from twenty-five to eighty thousand vibrations. +He will deal with the various vibrations of nerves and wires and +wireless air, that are necessary in conveying thought between two +separated minds. He will make clear how a thought, originating in the +brain, passes along the nerve-wires to the vocal chords, and then in +wireless vibration of air to the disc of the transmitter. At the other +end of the line the second disc re-creates these vibrations, which +impinge upon the nerve-wires of an ear, and are thus carried to the +consciousness of another brain. + +And so, notwithstanding all that has been done since Bell opened up +the way, the telephone remains the acme of electrical marvels. No +other thing does so much with so little energy. No other thing is more +enswathed in the unknown. Not even the gray-haired pioneers who have +lived with the telephone since its birth, can understand their protege. +As to the why and the how, there is as yet no answer. It is as true of +telephony to-day as it was in 1876, that a child can use what the wisest +sages cannot comprehend. + +Here is a tiny disc of sheet-iron. I speak--it shudders. It has a +different shudder for every sound. It has thousands of millions of +different shudders. There is a second disc many miles away, perhaps +twenty-five hundred miles away. Between the two discs runs a copper +wire. As I speak, a thrill of electricity flits along the wire. This +thrill is moulded by the shudder of the disc. It makes the second disc +shudder. And the shudder of the second disc reproduces my voice. That is +what happens. But how--not all the scientists of the world can tell. + +The telephone current is a phenomenon of the ether, say the theorists. +But what is ether? No one knows. Sir Oliver Lodge has guessed that it +is "perhaps the only substantial thing in the material universe"; but no +one knows. There is nothing to guide us in that unknown country except +a sign-post that points upwards and bears the one word--"Perhaps." The +ether of space! Here is an Eldorado for the scientists of the future, +and whoever can first map it out will go far toward discovering the +secret of telephony. + +Some day--who knows?--there may come the poetry and grand opera of the +telephone. Artists may come who will portray the marvel of the wires +that quiver with electrified words, and the romance of the switchboards +that tremble with the secrets of a great city. Already Puvis de +Chavannes, by one of his superb panels in the Boston Library, has +admitted the telephone and the telegraph to the world of art. He has +embodied them as two flying figures, poised above the electric wires, +and with the following inscription underneath: "By the wondrous agency +of electricity, speech dashes through space and swift as lightning bears +tidings of good and evil." + +But these random guesses as to the future of the telephone may fall far +short of what the reality will be. In these dazzling days it is idle to +predict. The inventor has everywhere put the prophet out of business. +Fact has outrun Fancy. When Morse, for instance, was tacking up his +first little line of wire around the Speedwell Iron Works, who could +have foreseen two hundred and fifty thousand miles of submarine cables, +by which the very oceans are all aquiver with the news of the world? +When Fulton's tiny tea-kettle of a boat steamed up the Hudson to Albany +in two days, who could have foreseen the steel leviathans, one-sixth of +a mile in length, that can in the same time cut the Atlantic Ocean in +halves? And when Bell stood in a dingy workshop in Boston and heard +the clang of a clock-spring come over an electric wire, who could have +foreseen the massive structure of the Bell System, built up by half the +telephones of the world, and by the investment of more actual capital +than has gone to the making of any other industrial association? Who +could have foreseen what the telephone bells have done to ring out the +old ways and to ring in the new; to ring out delay, and isolation and to +ring in the efficiency and the friendliness of a truly united people? + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The History of the Telephone, by Herbert N. Casson + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE *** + +***** This file should be named 819.txt or 819.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/819/ + +Produced by Charles Keller + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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