Telephone book

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From that memorable day in June, 1875, when Alexander Graham Bell discovered a faint sound emanating from the curious little machine over which three years of patient labor had been spent, until today, when the world is debtor to this great man for one of the marvels of the age, the telephone has been a constant wonder and especially so at this time, when its adaptability for the common uses of life has made it of value wherever civilization extends. ”

“ Along the lines of civilizing contact the telephone fairly divides the wonders of the century with the telegraph, while for intimate intellectual communication it is a triumph of genius without parallel. It is the dispenser of speech in city, town, and village; in factory and mine, in army and navy ”

“ This is the longest talk on record—that is, it is the longest continuous telephone line in steady and constant use, though the human voice has been carried even greater distances with the aid of this wonderful instrument.
The telephone is so common that no one stops to consider the wonder of it, and not one person in a hundred can tell how it works. ”

“ These uses seem wonderful to us, but each year sees the telephone helping man more and more in strange and powerful ways. It is likely that we have just begun to know a little of what this great invention can do for us.
However, if we had been boys and girls in 1875 we should have known nothing about talking over a telephone, for that was the year when the public first heard that it was possible to send sounds of the human voice along a wire from one place to another. ”

“ I suppose the telephone is really a useful invention. Business men tell me they wonder how they contrived to conduct their affairs without it. My own wonder always is, how any human being with the ordinary passions of his race can conduct his business, or even himself, creditably, within a hundred yards of the invention. I can imagine Job, or Griselda, or Socrates liking to have a telephone about them as exercise. Socrates, in particular, would have made quite a reputation for himself out of a three months’ subscription to a telephone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But to turn from the more whimsical aspects of this very curious discovery to its more impressive aspects, certainly nothing of modern invention has proved so extraordinary an illustration of the subjective character of space-and-time distinctions as these two kinds of telephones,—the telephone which enables a man to speak at one point and be heard at another, hundreds of miles distant, and the still more curious telephone which enables a man to speak at one point of time and be heard when not only his name, but even his nation, it may be, is forgotten. ”

“ 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. ”

“ APPENDIX B Through the courtesy of J.J. Carty, Esq., Chief Engineer of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, there follows the clean-cut survey of the evolution of the telephone presented in his address before the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, May 17, 1916, when he received the gold medal of the Institute.
More than any other, the telephone art is a product of American institutions and reflects the genius of our people. The story of its wonderful development is a story of our own country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a great proportion of all the business transacted will be done by telephones the frequent occurrence of disputes as to what has or has not been said in a given conversation will have rendered safeguards necessary. Consequently, every telephone will be attached to an instrument, developed from the phonograph, which will record whatever is said at both ends of the line. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I traced the wires from the place they entered the building and sure enough I found a relay with a high resistance coil in the circuit. I cut it out with a piece of wire across the binding posts and rushed back to my telephone and listened. That was the trouble. Plainly as one could wish came Bell’s “ahoy,” “ahoy!” [1] I ahoyed back, and the first long distance telephone conversation began. Skeptics had been objecting that the telephone could never compete with the telegraph as its messages would not be accurate. ”

“ THE TELEPHONE AND PHONOGRAPH. No invention of modern times equals in interest the Telephone. It has remained for an American to solve the problem of communication between persons at a distance from each other. Scientists, by means of electricity and sound, have devised an apparatus for transmitting the voice to a distance of hundreds of miles. To Alexander Graham Bell, of Massachusetts, and to Elisha P. Gray, of Chicago, is due the honor of originating this wonderful invention. ”

“ Telegraphs and cables were invented. The lightning became a carrier of thought, and the nations became neighbors. Anaesthetics were discovered and pain was lost in sleep. Surgery became a science. The telephone was invented—the telephone that carries and deposits in listening ears the waves of words. The phonograph, that catches and retains in marks and dots and gives again the echoes of our speech.
Then came electric light that fills the night with day, and all the wonderful machines that use the subtle force—the same force that leaps from the summer cloud to ravage and destroy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Meanwhile the fame of the invention had spread rapidly abroad and all sorts of people made pilgrimages to Bell’s laboratory to hear the telephone talk. A list of the scientists who came to the attic of that cheap boarding house to see the telephone would read like the roster of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. My old electrical mentor, Moses G. Farmer, called one day to see the latest improvements. ”

“ The telephone is the wonder of the day, but among the inventions to which the investigation of this subject has given rise is one of a kind which to us—accustomed as we now are to the electric telegraph—appears still more marvellous than even the telephone itself, one which would enable us to talk further into the future than the telephone will ever enable us to talk into space. ”

“ The telephone seemed quite dead.
“I don’t understand!” said Desmond to Mortimer. “What’s annoying?”
“The telephone, my dear Bellward,”—Mortimer spoke in a pompous voice—“the telephone is the symbol of the age in which we live, the age of publicity but also of indiscretion. It is almost as indiscreet to have a telephone in your house as to keep a diary. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The proprietors of the Telephone, the invention of Alexander Graham Bell, for which patents have been issued by the United States and Great Britain, are now prepared to furnish Telephones for the transmission of articulate speech through instruments not more than twenty miles apart. Conversation can be easily carried on after slight practice and with the occasional repetition of a word or sentence. On first listening to the Telephone, though the sound is perfectly audible, the articulation seems to be indistinct ”

“ He did not hear the hurried whisper: 'Louise, you won't forget me, you will trust me till next Christmas-time?'
The ball was over, the rooms were dark and silent; the whole world waited for the sun to rise on Christmas-day.
IS THE TELEPHONE A PRACTICAL SUCCESS?
In September last appeared in this Journal an article entitled 'Singing and Talking by Telegraph;' and in that paper we attempted to describe the mechanism of that wonderful little instrument the telephone. It is now our purpose to say something regarding the progress that has been made towards perfecting the invention ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But because a way was found to couple the wireless telephone with the wire telephone, the new wonder has great possibilities as a supplement to our existing system. Before so very long it may be possible for an American business man sitting in his office to call up and converse with a friend on a liner crossing the Atlantic. ”

“ The invention of a telephone is a great blessing to mankind; it enables friends to talk to each other at a distance without the trouble of calling. [1] Sweethearts can exchange their sweet nothings, and even proposals of marriage have been made and accepted through the telephone. However, one is subjected to frequent annoyances from wrong connections at the Central Office, and sometimes grave errors are made. Once, through a serious blunder, or a mischievous joke, I lost a dinner in my Legation in Washington. ”

“ At the Centennial Exposition, in Philadelphia, in 1876, was given the first general public exhibition of the telephone by its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. To-day, seventeen years later, more than half a million instruments are in daily use in the United States alone, six hundred million talks by telephone are held every year, and the human voice is carried over a distance of twelve hundred miles without loss of sound or syllable. ”