Telephony

“ We’re inventors, and we have discovered something regarding wireless telephony which will soon startle the whole world. The boy, whoever he is, will be startled and hold his tongue—till we decide how to deal with him. ”

“ Wireless telephony, like wireless telegraphy, but to an even greater extent, is peculiarly suited for the conveyance of marine intelligence. Wireless telephony occupies a unique position in this regard-no operator is required. The additional expense of an operator is an objection to the wireless telegraph in many cases, and forbids its installation. Anybody can operate the wireless telephone. It is also much quicker-words can be spoken more rapidly than they can be put into Morse signals and translated. ”

“ The Bell telephone—The Edison transmitter—The granular carbon transmitter—General arrangement of a telephone circuit—Double-line circuits—Telephone exchanges—Submarine telephony.
For the purposes of everyday life the telephone is even more useful than the telegraph. Telephones now connect one room of a building with another, house with house, town with town, country with country. An infinitely greater number of words pass over the telephonic circuits of the world in a year than are transmitted by telegraph operators. ”

“ Radio-Telephony. Appendices: The Morse Alphabet. Electrical Units used in this Book. International Control of Radio-Telegraphy. Index.
The startling discovery twelve years ago of what is popularly known as Wireless Telegraphy has received many no less startling additions since then. The official name now given to this branch of electrical practice is Radio-Telegraphy. The subject has now reached a thoroughly practicable stage, and this book presents it in clear, concise form. ”

“ The telephone service has been extended to great distances—for instance, from Boston to Omaha—not by relays, but by strengthening the blows upon the medium between the transmitting circuit and the receiving one, just as we desire to do in what is called wireless telegraphy, the apparatus of which is almost identical in principle to that employed in telephony. ”

“ To-day there is little temptation to the telegrapher to go to distant parts of the country on the chance that he may secure a livelihood at the key. The ranks are well filled everywhere, and of late years the telegraph as an art or industry has shown relatively slight expansion, owing chiefly to the development of telephony. ”

“ 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. ”

“ FIG. 153.—The aerial system of a transatlantic station.
The wireless telephone enables a passenger on board ship to communicate direct with his home by relaying the message over the line wires. By the same means the captain of a ship can call his home office and communicate with the owner of the vessel.
Telegraphs and telephones are the nerves of the world, carrying swift messages from its brain centers to its hands, annihilating distance in thought. All differences between men as individuals and people as nations can be traced to the lack of close contact. ”

“ During a recent sojourn in Europe, I learned that not only young men, but educated women also, were studying electrical engineering, and that large fortunes have been made in it. The enormous extension of the telegraphic system, and the wonderful advances made in electricity, electric lighting, telephony, electrical cables, and railways, and in the transmission of power, offer great advantages to persons seeking profitable employment. Telegraph engineering or electrical engineering is a new profession. ”

“ Without going into details, I shall merely say that the great defects of this plan of multiple telegraphy were found to consist, firstly, in the fact that the receiving operators were required to possess a good musical ear in order to discriminate the signals; and secondly, that the signals could only pass in one direction along the line (so that two wires would be necessary in order to complete communication in both directions) . ”

“ The sections on Telegraphy cover both commercial service and train dispatching. Practical methods of wireless communication—both by telephone and by telegraph—are thoroughly treated.
The drawings, diagrams, and photographs incorporated into the Cyclopedia have been prepared especially for this work; and their instructive value is as great as that of the text itself. They have been used to illustrate and illuminate the text, and not as a medium around which to build the text. ”

“ With the telephone it is a simple matter to arrange for provision so that the chief dispatcher, the superintendent, or any other official may listen in at will upon a train circuit to observe the character of the service. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, most of them can and do work the key with one hand while they eat their lunch with the other; and the call or signal for his office will instantly awaken him from a sleep which a cannon-shot would not disturb. Telegraphy, in a word, develops a sort of sixth sense, and the experienced operator receives or sends a message as readily as he talks or reads or writes. It is second nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How well do I remember the many journeys I made over the Alleghany Mountains by stage to Pittsburg, Brownsville, and Wheeling, and how steam power superseded horse power in ferryboats, treadmills, and sailing vessels on the ocean!
I have told you how I went with Prof. Morse to receive what may be deemed the first message of the telegraph; now we send messages around the world.
In 1862 I saw a telephone established from one house to another, 351 distant about fifty yards, by two young ladies in Wilmington, N. C., to communicate with each other. To-day we talk face to face a thousand miles. ”

“ No, for I think an answer will come only directly after I have sent out a call, and it has been picked up by some operator. Still there is a possibility that some operator might receive my message, and report to his chief, or some one in authority over him, before replying. In that time I might go away. But to guard against that I will sleep with the telephone receiver clamped to my ear. Then I can hear the answer come over the wires, and can jump up and reply. ”

“ The Telephone should be set in a quiet place, where there is no noise which would interrupt ordinary conversation.
The advantages of the Telephone over the Telegraph for local business are
1st. That no skilled operator is required, but direct communication may be had by speech without the intervention of a third person.
2d. That the communication is much more rapid, the average number of words transmitted a minute by Morse Sounder being from fifteen to twenty, by Telephone from one to two hundred. ”

“ These vibrations were continued through New York City to Providence and onward. The private telephone line of these gentlemen was parallel to the wire of the Western Union Company which had been thus affected, and these vibrations were picked off from the telegraph wire and conveyed by this parallel telephone wire to the receivers at these three houses.
What will be the next wonderful invention? The telegraph transmits your thoughts and delivers them in writing; the telephone transmits your thoughts and delivers them to the ear by sounds. ”

“ On Thursday morning, therefore, you should go to a public telephone-booth in order to call the young lady’s house. The etiquette of telephoning is quite important and many otherwise perfectly well-bred people often make themselves conspicuous because they do not know the correct procedure in using this modern but almost indispensable invention. Upon entering the telephone-booth, which is located, say, in some drug store, you remove the receiver from the hook and deposit the requisite coin in the coin box. ”

“ Nearly all the big wireless companies have great stations fitted with powerful telephone transmitters and at given hours of the day and night they send out songs by popular singers, dance music by jazz orchestras, fashion talks by and for the ladies, agricultural reports, government weather forecasts and other interesting features. Then by simply shifting the slide on your tuning coil you can often tune-in someone who is sending Morse, that is, messages in the dot and dash code, or, perhaps a friend who has a wireless telephone transmitter and is talking. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another more recent and perhaps still more wonderful achievement in modern telegraphy is the invention of the telephone and microphone, by means of which the human voice is transmitted through the electric conductor, by mechanism that imposes through its extreme simplicity. ”

“ At the close of the century, however, by means of ocean cables and telegraph lines, and telephone instrumentalities—to say nothing of the more wonderful wireless telegraphy now coming into use—we are in instant communication with all the great centers of civilization, and each morning may read the world's daily history gathered by these agencies for our instruction. ”

“ In such a sense many of the most common modern conveniences of life would have seemed impossible a century ago. To travel with safety sixty miles an hour, to talk through the telephone with a friend an hundred miles away, to receive intelligible messages across the Atlantic by a cable, and, still more, to communicate by wireless telegraphy would have seemed impossible until recently. ”

“ The improvement of the telegraph is taking other directions. On the common lines the messages are sent by the operator at the rate of about thirty or forty words a minute, lint inventions are in progress, and are now being introduced, which will enable a thousand words a minute to be sent. Think of sending messages from Boston to New York over one wire, and recording them there, at the rate of a thousand words a minute! Few people speak at the rate of two hundred words a minute. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In that sort of wireless telegraphy, that reaching out of two natures through space towards each other, her more sensitive apparatus probably feels the appeal of his before he is conscious of having made any appeal. ”

“ 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 ”

“ See under Acoustic. — Dial telegraph, a telegraph in which letters of the alphabet and numbers or other symbols are placed upon the border of a circular dial plate at each station, the apparatus being so arranged that the needle or index of the dial at the receiving station accurately copies the movements of that at the sending station. — Electric telegraph, or Electro- magnetic telegraph, a telegraph in which an operator at one station causes words or signs to be made at another by means of a current of electricity, generated by a battery and transmitted over an intervening wire. ”

“ The telephone grew rapidly into favor as a means of communication and in a short time it was used more than the telegraph. It is estimated that in the entire world about ten billion conversations are held over the telephone in the course of a single year.
As wonderful as the telephone was it was quickly followed by an invention even more wonderful. Al [241] most as soon as men had thoroughly mastered the art of sending messages by the aid of wires they set about trying to find a way by which messages could be sent long distances without any wires at all. ”