engineering, experimental and research department which is under my
charge. From only two men in 1876 this staff has, in 1915, grown
to more than six hundred engineers and scientists, including former
professors, post-graduate students, and scientific investigators,
graduates of nearly a hundred American colleges and universities, thus
emphasizing in a special way the American character of the art. The
above number includes only those devoted to experimental and research
work and engineering development and standardization, and does
not include the very much larger body of engineers engaged in
manufacturing and in practical field work throughout the United
States. Not even the largest and most powerful government telephone
and telegraph administration of Europe has a staff to be compared with
this. It is in our great universities that anything like it is to
be found, but even here we find that it exceeds in number the entire
teaching staff of even our largest technical institutions.
A good idea may spring up in the mind of man anywhere, but as applied
to such a complex entity as a telephone system, the countless parts of
which cover a continent, no individual unaided can bring the idea to
a successful conclusion. A comprehensive and effective engineering and
scientific and development organization such as this is necessary, and
years of expensive work are required before the idea can be rendered
useful to the public.
But, vital as they are to its success, the, telephone art requires
more than engineers and scientists. So we find that in the building
and operation and maintenance of that vast continental telephone
system which bears the name of Bell, in honor of the great inventor,
there are at work each day more than 170,000 employees, of which
nearly 20,000 are engaged in the manufacture of telephones,
switchboards, cables, and all of the thousands and tens of thousands
of parts required for the operation of the telephone system of
America.
The remaining 150,000 are distributed throughout all of the States
of the Union. About 80,000 of these are women, largely telephone
operators; 50,000 are linemen, installers, cable splicers, and the
like, engaged in the building and maintaining of the continental
plant. There are thousands of other employees in the accounting,
legal, commercial and other departments. There are 2,100 engineers
located in different parts of the country. The majority of these
engineers have received technical training in American technical
schools, colleges, and universities. This number does not include
by any means all of those in the other departments who have received
technical or college training.
In view of the technical and scientific nature of the telephone art,
an unusually high-grade personnel is required in all departments, and
the amount of unskilled labor employed is relatively very small.
No other art calls forth in a higher degree those qualities of
initiative, judgment, skill, enterprise, and high character which have
in all times distinguished the great achievements of America.
In 1876 the telephone plant of the whole world could be carried away
in the arms of one man. It consisted of two crude telephones like the
one now before you, connected together by a wire of about one hundred
feet in length. A piece cut from this wire by Mr. Watson himself is
here in this little glass case.
At this time there was no practical telephone transmitter, no
hard-drawn copper wire, no transposed and balanced metallic circuits,
no multiple telephone switchboard, or telephone switchboard of any
kind, no telephone cable that would work satisfactorily; in fact,
there were none of the multitude of parts which now constitute the
telephone system.
The first practical telephone line was a copy of the best telegraph
line of the day. A line wire was strung on the poles and housetops,
using the ground for the return circuit. Electrical disturbances,
coming from no one knows where, were picked up by this line.
Frequently the disturbances were so loud in the telephone as to
destroy conversation. When a second telephone line was strung
alongside the first, even though perfectly insulated, another surprise
awaited the telephone pioneers. Conversation carried on over one of
these wires could plainly be heard on the other. Another strange
thing was discovered. Iron wire was not so good a conductor for the
telephone current as it was for the telegraph current. The talking
distance, therefore, was limited by the imperfect carrying power of
the conductor and by the confusing effect of all sorts of disturbing
currents from the atmosphere and from neighboring telephone and
telegraph wires.
These and a multitude of other difficulties, constituting problems of
the most intricate nature, impeded the progress of the telephone
art, but American engineers, by persistent study, incessant
experimentation, and the expenditure of immense sums of money, have
overcome these difficulties. They have created a new art, inventing,
developing, and perfecting, making improvements great and small in
telephone, transmitter, line, cable, switchboard, and every other
piece of apparatus and plant required for the transmission of speech.
As the result of nearly forty years of this unceasing, organized
effort, on the 25th of January, 1915, there was dedicated to the
service of the American public a transcontinental telephone line,
3,600 miles long, joining the Atlantic and the Pacific, and carrying
the human voice instantly and distinctly between San Francisco and New
York and Philadelphia and Boston. On that day over this line Doctor
Bell again talked to Mr. Watson, who was now 3,400 miles away. It was
a day of romantic triumph for these two men and for their associates
and their thousands of successors who have built up the great American
telephone art.
The 11th of February following was another day of triumph for the
telephone art as a product of American institutions, for, in the
presence of dignitaries of the city and State here at Philadelphia and
at San Francisco, the sound of the Liberty Bell, which had not been
heard since it tolled for the death of Chief-Justice Marshall,
was transmitted by telephone over the transcontinental line to San
Francisco, where it was plainly heard by all those there assembled.
Immediately after this the stirring tones of the "Star-spangled
Banner" played on the bugle at San Francisco were sent like lightning
back across the continent to salute the old bell in Philadelphia.
It had often been pointed out that the words of the tenth verse of the
twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, added when the bell was recast in
1753, were peculiarly applicable to the part played by the old bell in
1776. But the words were still more prophetic. The old bell had been
silent for nearly eighty years, and it was thought forever, but by the
use of the telephone a gentle tap, which could be heard through the
air only a few feet away, was enough to transmit the tones of the
historic relic all the way across the continent from the Atlantic to
the Pacific. Thus, by the aid of the telephone art, the Liberty Bell
was enabled literally to fulfil its destiny and "Proclaim liberty
throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof."
The two telephone instruments of 1876 had become many millions by
1916, and the first telephone line, a hundred feet long, had grown to
one of more than three thousand miles in length. This line is but part
of the American telephone system of twenty-one million miles of
wire, connecting more than nine million telephone stations located
everywhere throughout the United States, and giving telephone service
to one hundred million people. Universal telephone service throughout
the length and breadth of our land, that grand objective of Theodore
N. Vail, has been attained.
While Alexander Graham Bell was the first to transmit the tones of
the human voice over a wire by electricity, he was also the first to
transmit the tones of the human voice by the wireless telephone,
for in 1880 he spoke along a beam of light to a point a considerable
distance away. While the method then used is different from that now
in vogue, the medium employed for the transmission is the same--the
ether, that mysterious, invisible, imponderable wave-conductor which
permeates all creation.
While many great advances in the wireless art were made by Marconi and
many other scientists in America and elsewhere, it remained for that
distinguished group of American scientists and engineers working under
my charge to be the first to transmit the tones of the human voice in
the form of intelligible speech across the Atlantic Ocean. This great
event and those immediately preceding it are so fresh in the public
mind that I will make but a brief reference to them here.
On April 4, 1915, we were successful in transmitting speech without
the use of wires from our radio station at Montauk Point on Long
Island to Wilmington, Delaware.
On May 18th we talked by radio telephone from our station on Long
Island to St. Simon Island in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of
Georgia.
On the 27th of August, with our apparatus installed by permission of
the Navy Department at the Arlington, Virginia, radio station, speech
was successfully transmitted from that station to the Navy wireless
station equipped with our receiving apparatus at the Isthmus of
Panama.
On September 29th, speech was successfully transmitted by wire from
New York City to the radio station at Arlington, Virginia, and thence
by wireless telephone across the continent to the radio station at
Mare Island Navy-yard, California, where I heard and understood the
words of Mr. Theodore N. Vail speaking to me from the telephone on his
desk at New York.
On the next morning at about one o'clock, Washington time, we
established wireless telephone communication between Arlington,
Virginia, and Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands, where an engineer
of our staff, together with United States naval officers, distinctly
heard words spoken into the telephone at Arlington, Virginia. On
October 22d, from the Arlington tower in Virginia, we successfully
transmitted speech across the Atlantic Ocean to the Eiffel Tower at
Paris, where two of our engineers, in company with French military
officers, heard and understood the words spoken at Arlington.
On the same day when speech was being transmitted by the apparatus at
Arlington to our engineers and to the French military officers at the
Eiffel Tower in Paris, our telephone engineer at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,
together with an officer of the United States Navy, heard the words
spoken from Arlington to Paris and recognized the voice of the
speaker.
As a result of exhaustive researches, too extensive to describe here,
it has been ascertained that the function of the wireless telephone
is not to do away with the use of wires, but rather to be employed
in situations where wires are not available or practicable, such as
between ship and ship, and ship and shore, and across large bodies of
water. The ether is a universal conductor for wireless telephone
and telegraph impulses and must be used in common by all who wish to
employ those agencies of communication. In the case of the wireless
telegraph the number of messages which may be sent simultaneously is
much restricted. In the case of the wireless telephone, owing to the
thousands of separate wave-lengths required for the transmission of
speech, the number of telephone conversations which may be carried on
at the same time is still further restricted and is so small that
all who can employ wires will find it necessary to do so, leaving the
ether available for those who have no other means of communication.
This quality of the ether which thus restricts its use is really
a characteristic of the greatest value to mankind, for it forms a
universal party line, so to speak, connecting together all creation,
so that anybody anywhere, who connects with it in the proper manner,
may be heard by every one else so connected. Thus, a sinking ship or a
human being anywhere can send forth a cry for help which may be heard
and answered.
No one can tell how far away are the limits of the telephone art, I
am certain that they are not to be found here upon the earth, for
I firmly believe in the fulfilment of that prophetic aspiration
expressed by Theodore N. Vail at a great gathering in Washington, that
some day we will build up a world telephone system, making necessary
to all peoples the use of a common language or a common understanding
of languages which will join all of the people of the earth into one
brotherhood. I believe that the time will come when the historic bell
which now rests in Independence Hall will again be sounded, and
that by means of the telephone art, which to-day has received such
distinguished recognition at your hands, it will proclaim liberty
once more, but this time throughout the whole world unto all the
inhabitants thereof. And, when this world is ready for the message, I
believe the telephone art will provide the means for transmitting to
all mankind a great voice saying, "Peace on earth, good will toward
men."
INDEX
A
Ampere's telegraph, 42.
Anglo-American Telegraph Co., 134.
Ardois signal system, 30.
Atlantic cable projected, 109;
attempted, 117, 121, 123, 133;
completed, 124, 136.
Audion amplifier, 256.
Automatic telegraphy, 53, 105, 266.
B
Baltimore-Washington Telegraph Line, 86.
Bell, Alexander Graham, parentage, 140;
youth, 141;
teaches elocution, 146;
experiments with speech, 151, 161;
meets Henry, 158;
invents telephone, 162;
at Centennial Exposition, 165;
demonstrates telephone, 170;
Bell Telephone Association, 178;
Bell-Western Union Settlement;
Bell and wireless telegraphy, 189;
Transcontinental telephone, 248.
Bethell, Union N., 241.
Blake, Clarence J., 154.
Blake, Francis, invents telephone transmitter, 182.
Branly coherer, 204.
Brett, J.W., 112.
Bright, Charles Tiltson, 112, 120, 125, 128.
C
Cable laid across Channel, 108.
Carty, J.J., youth, 232;
enters telephone field, 234;
Carty and the switchboard, 235, 242;
uses metallic circuit, 238;
in New York City, 241;
invents bridging bell, 243;
chief engineer, 244;
extends long-distance telephone, 246;
seeks wireless telephone, 253;
talks across continent by wireless, 257.
Clepsydra, 18.
Code flags at sea, 24.
Coherer, 203.
Colomb's flashing lights, 25.
Congress votes funds for telegraph, 84.
Cooke, William P., 49, 52.
Cornell, Ezra, 86, 93, 107.
D
Davy's needle telegraph, 44.
De Forest, Dr. Lee, 225, 256.
Dolbear and telephone, 185;
wireless telegraphy, 194.
Drawbaugh case, 186.
Duplex telegraphy, 104, 265.
Dyar, Harrison Gray, 41.
E
Edison, and the telegraph, 104;
telephone transmitter 180;
wireless telegraphy, 195.
Ellsworth, Annie, 85.
F
Field, Cyrus W., plans Transatlantic cable, 110;
honors, 125, 136;
develops cable, 130, 134.
G
Gale, Professor, 67, 86.
Gauss and Weber's telegraph, 43.
Gisborne, F.N., 109.
Gray, Elisha, 157, 184.
_Great Eastern_, 132, 135, 139.
Guns as marine signals, 23.
H
Hammond, John Hays, 229.
Heaviside, A.W., 196.
Heliograph, 29.
Henry, Joseph, 65, 67, 158, 169.
Hertz and the Hertzian waves, 197.
Hubbard, Gardiner G., 149, 159, 170, 178.
Hubbard, Mabel, 148, 166.
I
Indian smoke signals, 20.
J
Jackson, Dr. Charles T., 64, 79.
K
Kelvin, Lord (See Thomson), 138.
"Kwaker" captured, 50.
L
Long-distance telephone, 245.
M
Magnetic Telegraph Co., 93.
Marconi, boyhood, 199;
accomplished wireless telegraphy, 202;
demonstration in England, 209;
Transatlantic telegraphy, 217;
Marconi Telegraph Company, 220.
Marine signals on Argonautic expedition, 15.
Mirror galvanometer, 127.
Mirrors of Pharaoh, 17.
Morse at University of New York, 66.
Morse, code in signals, 27;
parentage, 56;
at Yale, 57;
art student, 59;
artist, 62;
conceives the telegraph, 63;
exhibits telegraph, 75;
offers telegraph to Congress, 76, 91;
patents telegraph, 82;
submarine cable, 83, 107;
erects first line, 86;
dies, 104.
Multiplex printer telegraph, 274.
Mundy, Arthur J., 31.
O
O'Reilly, Henry, 94.
P
Preece, W.H., 196, 209.
Printing telegraph, 271.
Pupin, Michael I., 247.
Q
Quadruplex telegraphy, 104, 265.
R
Reis's musical telegraph, 157.
S
Sanders, Thomas, 148, 159, 178.
Scribner, Charles E., 236.
Searchlight telephone, 251.
Semaphore signals, 27.
Shouting sentinels, 16.
Sibley, Hiram, 96, 99.
Signal columns, 19.
Siphon recorder, 137.
Smith, Francis O.J., 76.
Stentorophonic tube, 18.
Submarine signals, 31.
T
Telegraph, first suggestion, 39;
patented, 82;
development, 264.
Telephone invented and patented, 162;
at Centennial, 165;
exchange, 177.
Thomson, youth, 144;
cable adviser, 121;
invents mirror galvanometer, 126;
knighted, 136;
invents siphon recorder, 137;
connection with telephone, 169.
Transatlantic cable (See Atlantic cable).
Transatlantic wireless telegraphy, 216.
Transatlantic wireless telephone, 259.
Transcontinental telegraph, 96.
Transcontinental telephone, 246.
Transcontinental wireless telephone, 257.
Trowbridge, John, 190.
Troy, signaling fall of, 14.
Tuning the wireless telegraph, 222.
V
Vail, Alfred, arranges Morse code, joins Morse, 70;
makes telephone apparatus, 72;
operates first line, 90;
improves telegraph, 100.
Vail, Theodore, joins telephone forces, 180;
puts wires underground, 239;
adopts copper circuits, 240;
resumes telephone leadership, 244;
talks across continent without wires, 257.
W
Watson, aids Bell with telephone, 159;
telephone partner, 175;
helps demonstrate telephone, 175;
telephones across continent, 248.
Western Union, organized, 96;
enters telephone field, 178.
Wheatstone, 1;
boyhood, 45;
five-needle telegraph, 49;
single-needle telegraph, 52;
Wheatstone-Cooke controversy, 52;
automatic transmitter, 53;
bridge, 53;
opposes Morse, 78;
encourages Bell, 145.
Wig-wag system, 26.
Wireless telegraphy suggested, 188;
invented, 202;
on shipboard, 221;
in the future, 230.
Wireless telephone, conceived, 250;
future, 260;
in navy, 261.
End of Project Gutenberg's Masters of Space, by Walter Kellogg Towers