On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, standing in a little attic at
No. 5 Exeter Place, Boston, sent through his crude telephone the first
spoken words ever carried over a wire, and the words were heard and
understood by his associate, Thomas A. Watson, who was at the receiver
in an adjacent room. On that day the telephone was born, and the first
message went over the only telephone line in the world--a line less than
a hundred feet long. On January 25, 1915, less than forty years later,
this same Alexander Graham Bell, in New York, talked to this same Thomas
A. Watson, in San Francisco, over a wire stretching 3,400 miles across
the continent.
[Illustration: DR. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL AT THE OPENING OF THE
TRANSCONTINENTAL LINE
In front of Dr. Bell is the replica of his original telephone, and to
his left is the glass case containing a piece of the wire over which Dr.
Bell and Mr. Watson carried on the first telephone conversation in the
world.]
In that memorable year of 1876, Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, while
visiting the Philadelphia Centennial, was attracted to Bell’s modest
telephone exhibit, picked up the receiver, listened as Professor Bell
talked at the other end of the room, and, amazed at the wonder of the
thing, cried out, “My God--it speaks!” From that time, the first
telephone exhibit became the center of attraction at the exposition. Had
Dom Pedro lived to see the Panama-Pacific Exposition he might have
listened to Professor Bell talking not merely from the other end of a
room, but from the other side of a continent.
Some idea of the rapid growth of the telephone business in the United
States may be gathered from the statistician’s figures, which show that
in 1880 there were less than 100,000 telephones in use in this country,
and in 1915 there were more than 9,000,000 telephones in the Bell System
alone. Of the 14,000,000 telephones in the world, 10,000,000 are in this
country. Sixty-five per cent of all the telephones in the world are in
this country, although it has only five and five-tenths per cent of the
world’s population. The Bell System alone reaches 70,000 places, 5,000
more than the number of post-offices and 10,000 more than the number of
railroad stations.
[Illustration: CENTRAL TELEPHONE EXCHANGE, NEW YORK CITY, 1880]
The telephone wire mileage in the United States is over 22,000,000
miles. In the Bell System there are over 18,000,000 miles of wire which
carry over 26,000,000 telephone talks daily--or nearly 9,000,000,000 per
year.
Essential Factor in American Life.
Such broad use is made of the telephone service of America that the
progress in telephony is an essential factor in all American progress.
A visiting Englishman envying the light, airy accommodations in the tall
office buildings in American cities, has sagely said that the skyscraper
would be impossible without the adequate telephone service which is here
provided.
In the housing of the people the telephone is a pioneering agent for
better conditions. In the cities telephone service is indispensable in
apartment houses and hotels which raise people above the noise and dust
of the street. In the suburbs the telephone and the trolley make the
waste places desirable homes, and although a man may walk some distance
to reach some transportation line, the telephone must enter his own
dwelling place before he is content to live there.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL OPERATING ROOM IN AN AMERICAN CITY, WITH THE
MOST MODERN BELL SWITCHBOARD]
This desirable decentralization of the population in which the telephone
has been so important a factor extends beyond the suburbs to the rural
districts, and the American farmer with his wife and family is blessed
by facilities for communication unknown in any other part of the world.
The fact that the farms and ranches in this country, and especially in
the west, have been of comparatively large area, has had a tendency to
make American farm life particularly lonely. It is safe to say that
nothing has done more to relieve this loneliness and prevent the drift
from the farms to the cities, than the widespread establishment of rural
telephone service.
The telephone development of the United States is not confined to the
large centers of population, but is well distributed, the large number
of farm telephones in this country being in strong contrast to the small
number of farm telephones in European countries.
It is obvious that the ordinary methods of commerce and manufacture
would have to be radically made over if the telephone service should
lose any of its present efficiency or if it should fail to advance so as
to meet the constantly increasing demands made upon it. With the first
day of telephone congestion ordinary business would come to a
standstill, and when an adjustment was made, everybody would find
himself slowed down, doing less work in longer hours and at greater
expense, and being unable to take advantage of opportunities for
advancement which he had come to consider an inalienable right.
Not only would methods be changed, but the physical structure of
business, especially in cities, would be completely metamorphosed. The
top floors of office buildings and hotels would be immediately less
desirable. In tall buildings the multitude of messengers and the
frequent passing in and out would demand the increase in elevator
facilities and even the enlargement of halls and doorways. Many of the
narrower streets would be impassable. Factories and warehouses now
located in the open country where land is cheap and the natural
conditions of working and living are most favorable, would be relocated
in cities as close as possible to their administrative and merchandising
headquarters.
It would be hard to find a line of business where progress would not be
seriously retarded by an impairment of the present telephone efficiency.
America Leads in Telephone Growth.
It is a far cry from Bell’s first telephone to Universal Service.
Bell’s invention had demonstrated the practicability of speech
transmission, but there were many obstacles to overcome and many
problems to be solved before the telephone could be of commercial value
and take its place among the great public utilities.
Professor Bell had demonstrated that two people could talk to each other
from connected telephones for a considerable distance. In order to be of
commercial value, it was necessary to establish an intercommunicating
system in which each telephone could be connected with every other
telephone in the system. This has been accomplished through the
invention of the multiple switchboard and a great number of inventions
and improvements in all the apparatus used in the transmission of
speech.
But it was an unexplored field into which the telephone pioneers so
courageously plunged. There were no beaten paths, and the way was beset
with unknown perils; there was no experience to guide. A vast amount of
educational work had to be done before a skeptical public would accept
the telephone at its true value, yet courage and persistency triumphed.
Discoveries and inventions followed scarcely less important than
Professor Bell’s original discovery.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL AMERICAN CENTRAL OFFICE BUILDING, SHOWING THE
EFFICIENT ARRANGEMENT OF THE VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS]
That the United States has from the beginning far outstripped the rest
of the civilized world in the growth of the telephone is shown by
comparison.
In all Great Britain there are but 700,000 telephones as against
10,000,000 in the United States. France has slightly more than half as
many as Greater New York. In Germany the telephone development is only
one-fifth of that of the United States. Italy has not as many telephones
as San Francisco, and all Russia, fewer than Chicago. Sweden, Norway and
Denmark show a higher telephone development than the other European
countries, but even in Denmark, where the telephone development is
highest, we find but 3.9 telephones per hundred population--less than
half the development in the United States.
The total number of telephones in all other European countries is
considerably less than may be found in two American cities, Chicago and
Philadelphia; all of South America has less than Boston, and the
remainder of the world, including Asia, Africa and Oceanica, has less
than the City of New York.
[Illustration: POLE LINE RUNNING THROUGH PRINCIPAL STREET IN AN ITALIAN
TOWN]
[Illustration: A TYPICAL EXAMPLE OF AMERICAN POLE LINE CONSTRUCTION]
American Telephone Practice Superior.
The superior telephone development in America is largely due to the
efficiency of American telephone equipment and practice. The mechanical
development has not only kept pace with public needs, but has
anticipated them.
It is the practice of the Bell System, for example, to make what are
called “fundamental development plans,” in which a forecast is made of
the telephone requirements of each American city twenty years ahead. The
construction in each city is begun with these ultimate requirements in
view. Underground conduits are built, central offices located and cables
provided with an eye to the future, and if these plans are carried out
important economies are obtained. If the plans are abandoned, the loss
may be very great. Furthermore, there are sure to be times when the
service will be interrupted and seriously impaired if such plans for the
future are not made and consistently carried out.
[Illustration: AMERICAN METHOD OF RAISING POLES BY DERRICK WITH POWER
FURNISHED BY MOTOR-TRUCK.]
[Illustration: ONE OF THE VARIED TYPES OF DESK TELEPHONES USED IN
FRANCE]
[Illustration: THE STANDARD AMERICAN DESK TELEPHONE]
[Illustration: TILE CONDUITS USED IN AMERICAN UNDERGROUND CONSTRUCTION]
It is characteristic of the best telephone management that while it
cannot always perfectly forecast the direction of immediate growth, it
should be built far enough ahead of present requirements to have a pair
of wires ready for each new customer. The fact that New York and other
large American cities have a considerable investment in telephone plant
constructed to meet a prospective demand, is the price which must be
paid by any telephone management which really supplies the wants of the
American people. Every additional subscriber that is connected with the
system, requires sooner or later an outlay of new capital for his
proportionate share of the whole plant, including equipment, wires,
poles, cables, switchboards and real estate. In America the new
subscriber finds his need anticipated and the facilities provided.
[Illustration: THIS PRIVATE SWITCHBOARD, IN ONE AMERICAN HOTEL, IS
LARGER THAN MANY A SWITCHBOARD ABROAD, WHICH SERVES A WHOLE CITY]
It is characteristic of private management that plans can be made for
the future with reasonable assurance that the necessary funds will not
be arbitrarily withheld, or that the work of the past will not be
ruthlessly cast aside.
Another factor of telephone service in America is promptness. Local
connections are made in a few seconds. In the case of interurban and
long-distance calls, to prevent the long waiting for a turn, which
abroad sometimes is a matter of hours, the American engineer provides
enough long-distance trunks, so that, except in cases of accident,
customers at the busiest times of the day are connected with distant
points without delay.
The First Transcontinental Line.
The opening of the first transcontinental line between New York and San
Francisco on January 25, 1915, was an epoch-making event in telephone
history. The line is 3,400 miles long. It crosses thirteen states; it is
carried on 130,000 poles. Four hard-drawn copper wires, .165 of an inch
in diameter, run side by side over the entire distance, establishing two
physical and one phantom circuit. The ordinary telephone connection
consists of two wires technically called a telephone circuit, each wire
constituting one “side” of the circuit. A phantom circuit is a circuit
superimposed on two ordinary circuits by so connecting the two wires or
“sides” of each ordinary circuit that they can be used as one side of
the phantom circuit. In this way three practical talking circuits can be
obtained from four wires. One mile of single wire used in the
transcontinental line weighs 435 pounds, the weight of the wires in the
entire line being 5,920,000 pounds, or 2,960 tons.
[Illustration: THIS PICTURE SHOWS THE DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED IN
HAULING POLES IN A MOUNTAINOUS SECTION ALONG THE TRANSCONTINENTAL LINE
OF THE BELL SYSTEM]
In addition to the transmission wires, each circuit uses some 13,600
miles of fine hair-like insulated wire .004 of an inch in diameter in
its loading coils.
It was, perhaps, little more difficult to string wires from Denver to
San Francisco than from New York to Denver, but the actual construction
of the line was the least of the telephone engineer’s troubles. His real
problem was to make the line “talk,” to send something 3,000 miles with
a breath as the motive power. In effect, the voyage of the voice across
the continent is instantaneous; if its speed should be accurately
measured, a fifteenth of a second would probably be nearly exact. In
other words, a message flying across the continent on the new
transcontinental line, travels, not at the rate of 1,160 feet per
second, which is the old stagecoach speed of sound, but at 56,000 miles
per second. If it were possible for sound to carry that far, a “Hello”
uttered in New York and traveling through the air without the aid of
wires and electricity would not reach San Francisco until four hours
later. The telephone not only transmits speech, but transmits it
thousands of times faster than its own natural speed.
But while the telephone is breaking speech records, it must also
guarantee safe delivery of these millions of little passengers it
carries every few minutes in the way of sound waves created at the rate
of 2,100 a second. There must be no jostling or crowding. These tiny
waves, thousands and thousands of varying shapes, which are made by the
human voice, and each as irregular and as different from the other as
the waves of the sea, must not tumble over each other or get into each
other’s way, but must break upon the Pacific coast as they started at
the Atlantic, or all the line fails and the millions of dollars spent
upon it have been thrown away. And in all this line, if just one
pin-point of construction is not as it should be, if there is one iota
of imperfection, the miles of line are useless and the currents and
waves and sounds and words do not reach the end as they should. It is
such tremendous trifles, not the climbing of mountains and the bridging
of chasms, that make the transcontinental line one of the wonders of the
ages.
The engineer in telephony cannot increase his motive power. A breath
against a metal disk changes air waves into electrical currents, and
these electrical currents, millions of which are required for a single
conversation, must be carried across the continent and produce the same
sound waves in San Francisco as were made in New York. Here is a task so
fine as to be gigantic. It was to nurse and coax this baby current of
electricity 3,000 miles across the continent, under rivers and over
mountains, through the blistering heat of the alkali plains and the cold
of snow-capped peaks, that has taken the time and thought and labor of
the brightest minds of the scientific world.
This great problem in transmission was due to the cumulative effect of
improvements, great and small, in telephone, transmitter, line, cable,
switchboard and every other piece of apparatus and plant required for
the transmission of speech.
The opening of the transcontinental telephone line has been followed by
the extension of “extreme distance” transmission into all the states of
the Union, by applying these new improvements to the plant of the Bell
System. It is now possible to talk from points in any one state to some
points in every other state of the Union, while over a very large part
of the territory covered by the Bell System, it is possible for any
subscriber to talk to any other subscriber, regardless of distance.
Wireless Speech Transmission.
During the year 1915 very notable development in radio-telephony, the
transmission of speech without wires, was made.
On April 4th the Bell telephone engineers were successful in
transmitting speech from a radio station at Montauk Point, on Long
Island, to Wilmington, Del.
On the 27th of August, with the Bell apparatus, installed by permission
of the Navy Department at the Arlington, Va., radio station, speech was
successfully transmitted from Arlington, Va., to the Navy wireless
station equipped with Bell apparatus at the Isthmus of Panama.
On September 29th speech was successfully transmitted by wire from the
headquarters of the company at 15 Dey Street, New York, to the radio
station at Arlington, Va., and thence by radio or wireless telephony
across the continent to the radio station at Mare Island Navy Yard,
Cal.
[Illustration: SETTING POLES ACROSS A SHALLOW LAKE IN NEVADA DURING THE
CONSTRUCTION OF THE TRANSCONTINENTAL LINE OF THE BELL SYSTEM]
On the next morning, at about one o’clock, Washington time, wireless
telephone communication was established between Arlington, Va., and
Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands, where the Bell engineer, together
with United States naval officers, distinctly heard words spoken into
the apparatus at Arlington.
On October 22d, from the Arlington tower in Virginia, speech was
transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean to the Eiffel Tower at Paris,
where the Bell engineers, in company with French military officers,
heard the words spoken at Arlington.
On the same day, when speech was being transmitted by the Bell apparatus
at Arlington to the engineers and the French military officers at the
Eiffel Tower in Paris, the telephone company’s representative at Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii, together with an officer of the United States Navy,
heard the words spoken from Arlington to Paris.
[Illustration: BY MEANS OF THE UNIVERSAL BELL SYSTEM THE NATION MAY BE
PROMPTLY ORGANIZED FOR UNITED ACTION IN ANY GREAT NATIONAL MOVEMENT]
It is believed that wireless telephony will form a most important
adjunct and extension to the existing schemes of communication. By its
means communication can be established between points where it is
impracticable to extend wires. For many reasons wireless telephony can
never take the place of wire systems, but it may be expected to
supplement them in a useful manner. Wireless telephone systems are
subject to serious interference from numerous conditions, atmospheric
and others. For many uses the fact that anyone suitably equipped can
listen in on a wireless telephone talk would be a serious limitation to
its use.
The Mobilization of Communication.
Besides these radio experiments, a demonstration has been given of the
availability of the Bell System and its wonderful potentiality in case
of an emergency which would require quick and satisfactory
intercommunication between the different departments of the government
and its scattered stations and officers throughout the whole country.
From 4 P. M., May 6, to 8 A. M., May 8, 1916, the United States Navy
Department and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company co-operated
in a general mobilization of the forces of communication. It was a test
of what could be done in a sudden military emergency, and was
gratuitously undertaken by the company at the request of the Secretary
of the Navy.
It was a sort of war game that brought into play the latest scientific
developments of telephone and telegraph communication, by wire and by
wireless, and demonstrated an efficiency that has not been attained in
any other country.
For some time the officers of the United States Navy had been working
together with the engineers of the Bell System in the study of wire and
wireless communications, and the Navy Department had permitted the
telephone engineers to use its towers for long-distance wireless
telephone experiments.
So, in the latest demonstration, the land towers of the navy were
utilized in connection with a wireless telephone installation on the
U. S. S. “New Hampshire,” and Captain Chandler, cruising off shore,
talked directly with the Secretary’s office in Washington.
For the time being the operating forces of the telephone company all
over the country were placed at the disposal of Captain W. H. G.
Bullard, Chief of the Bureau of Communications, and General
Superintendent of Plant F. A. Stevenson, of the American Telephone and
Telegraph Company, was assigned as his aide. While all the facilities of
the Bell System were available, only about 53,000 miles of wire were
necessary to connect all the navy yards and stations for telephonic and
telegraphic communication.
The successful demonstration showed that in case of any trouble
requiring any such service, because of the central control of the Bell
System, the government could have ready-made at its immediate disposal a
plant, equipment and operating staff which, for completeness and
efficiency, would not be possible in any other way.
* * * * *
Why do They Call Them “Fiddler-Crabs”?
There is one member of the crab family for which the Latin name is
_Gelasimus_, which means “laughable.” He certainly is appropriately
named, for he is a very queer little fellow. The male has one claw of
immense size, the other being quite small. The big claw is brightly
colored, and when he runs he waves it about as if he were energetically
beckoning, or playing some very stirring tune on a violin; hence he is
often known as a “Calling-crab” or a “Fiddler-crab.”
Fiddler-crabs inhabit various parts of the world, and are usually found
in large numbers on muddy or sandy flats left dry by the tide, where
they may be seen hurrying over the sand or peering out of their holes,
into which they immediately vanish when alarmed. The holes, which
usually are about a foot deep, are made by the crab persistently digging
up and carrying away little masses of mud or sand. When he is doing this
the crab presents a very funny appearance. Scraping up a quantity of
sand into a little heap, he grasps it with three of the legs on one side
and hurries away with it to some little distance. Having deposited his
load, he raises his eyes, which he can do quite effectively, as they are
situated at the end of very long, slender stalks, peers curiously
around, and scuttles back to the hole for another load of sand.
How Far can a Powerful Searchlight Send Its Rays?
Searchlights have recently been made capable of being seen nearly a
hundred miles away. Such lights are very valuable for signaling purposes
in time of war, and they are also much used on warships, enabling the
officers to detect the approach of an enemy in the dark and to guard
against torpedo boats.
[Illustration: LONG RIBBONS OF LIGHT
_Photo by Brown Bros._
The giant scintillator erected on the shore of the bay was not the least
wonderful of all the wonderful sights of the Panama-Pacific Exposition
at San Francisco.]
We are all familiar with the less powerful ones which are universally
used on automobiles for night driving and in a multitude of other
every-day practices. The illustration shows a battery of powerful
searchlights, the use of which furnished some very effective displays
during the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco in 1915.
Searchlights are ordinarily electric arc lights of great candle-power,
arranged with a parabolic reflector so that the rays are sent almost
wholly in one direct line, forming a path of light which may be
projected for miles.
What Started the Habit of Touching Glasses Before Drinking?
Just as athletes shake hands before the beginning of a contest today,
the people who fought duels in the olden days used to pause before their
fighting long enough to each drink a glass of wine furnished by their
friends. In order to make sure that no attempt was made to forestall the
results of the duel by poisoning the wine in either cup, they developed
the habit of pouring part of the contents of each glass into the other,
so that if either contestant was poisoned the other would be too.
This habit has continued up to the present time, although there is no
thought given now to the danger of poison, and in the present day the
ceremony of actually pouring the drink from one glass to another has
been omitted, merely the motion, as if to touch the glasses, sufficing
as an expression of friendliness and good will.
Touching glasses together in drinking, preparatory to a confidential
talk, has come to be nicknamed “hob-nobbing” because of the equipment
incidental to that action years ago. A “hob” was the flat part of the
open hearth where water and spirits were warmed; and the small table, at
which people sat when so engaged, was called a “nob.”
Why are Windows Broken by Explosions?
When the large cannons in the forts on our coast are discharged during
target practice, there are usually a lot of windows broken in the nearby
houses. In Jersey City, N. J., several freight cars and boats loaded
with dynamite and ammunition full of high explosives furnished the power
for an explosion which, in July, 1916, broke considerably over a hundred
thousand dollars worth of windows in the lower part of New York City.
The force of an explosion, whatever its source, throws back the air in
huge waves, very much like the waves of the ocean, and whatever they
come in contact with must have a sort of a tug-of-war with them, the
weaker side being crumpled up and pushed back by the other. Broad
expanses of glass, unprotected and without any support, except at the
extreme edges, present an easy mark for air waves, therefore, and the
amount of damage done to windows by explosions is usually only limited
by the power of the explosives which produce the force of air waves.
The earth beneath, and the roof and walls of a building above, all
receive the effects of these air waves in exactly the same way as do
windows, and the resulting disaster is in direct proportion to their
resisting capacity as against the pressure caused by the explosion. Many
striking examples of the power of explosives have been accidentally
furnished of late, in the course of making munitions for the European
war.
What does the Expression “Showing the White Feather” Come From?
We say people “show the white feather” when they display cowardice,
because a white feather in a bird marks a cross breed, and it is not
found on a fighting game-cock.