Part 4

Then I put in the rest of my leisure making trips among our agents this side of the Mississippi to bring them up to date and see what the enemy were up to. I kept a diary of those trips. It reads rather funnily to-day, but I won’t go into that. It would detract from the seriousness of this discourse.

Wire Troubles

Nor must I forget an occasional diversion in the way of a sleet storm which, combining with our wires then beginning to fill the air with house top lines and pole lines along the sidewalks, would make things extremely interesting for all concerned. I don’t remember ever going out to erect new poles and run wires after such a catastrophe. I think I must have done so, but such a trifling matter naturally would have made but little impression upon me.

Is it any wonder that my memory of those two years seems like a combination of the Balkan war, the rush hours on the subway and a panic on the stock market?

Memories

I was always glad I was not treasurer of the company, although I filled about all the other offices during those two years. Tom Sanders was our treasurer, and a mighty good one he made. Had it not been for his pluck and optimism, we might all of us have failed to attain the prosperity that came to us later. The preparation of this paper has aroused in me many delightful memories, but with them have been mixed sad thoughts, too, for friends who have gone. Jovial Tom Sanders! How everybody loved him! No matter how discouraging the outlook was the skies cleared whenever he came into the shop. I can hear his ringing laugh now!

It was a red-letter day for me when he hired the first bookkeeper the telephone business ever had—the keen, energetic, systematic Robert W. Devonshire. You must not forget “Dev.” I never shall, for after he came I didn’t have to keep the list of telephone leases in my head any more.

Then Thomas D. Lockwood was hired to take part of my engineering load, but he developed such an extraordinary faculty for comprehending the intricacies of patents and patent law, that our lawyers captured him very soon, and kept him at work until he practically captured their job. And how proud I was when the company could afford the extravagance of a clerk for me. He is still working for the company—Mr. George W. Pierce.

I suppose I did have some fun during this time, but the only diversion that lingers in my mind is arranging telephones in a diver’s helmet for the first time, and finding that the diver could not hear when he was under water, going down myself to see what the matter was. I still feel the pathos of the moment, when, arrayed for the descent, just before I disappeared beneath the limpid waters of Boston harbor, my usually undemonstrative assistant put his arm around my inflated neck and kissed me on the glass plate.

The Coming of Theodore N. Vail

But matters soon began to straighten out—the clouds gradually cleared away. The Western Union tornado ceased to rage, and David found to his delight that he had hit Goliath squarely in the forehead with a rock labelled Patent No. 174465. Then for the first time stock in the Bell Company began to be worth something on the stock market.

Something else happened about that time fully as important. The Company awoke to the fact that the Watson generator was overloaded, and that it ought to get a new dynamo. Watson could still hold up the engineering end perhaps, but we must have a business manager. President Hubbard said he knew just the man for us—a thousand horsepower steam engine wasting his abilities in the United States Railway Mail Service, and he sent me down to Washington to investigate and report.

I must have been impressed, for I telegraphed to Mr. Hubbard to hire the man if he could raise money enough to pay his salary. He did so. This was one of the best things I ever helped to do. When the new manager came to work a short time later, he said to me: “Watson, I want my desk alongside of yours for a few months until I learn the ropes.” But the balance of the conceit that previous two years had not knocked out of me vanished, when in about a fortnight, I found he knew all I had learned, and that at the end of a month I was toddling along in the rear trying to catch up, which I never did. He has still quite an important position in the business. His name is Theodore N. Vail. May his light never dim for many and many a year!

(_Editor’s Note: Mr. Vail died Apr. 16, 1920._)

The Bell System

The needs of the new business attracted other men with good ideas who entered our service, such men as Emile Berliner and George L. Anders and many others. Every agency became a center of inventive activity, each with its special group of ingenious, thinking men—every one of whom contributed something, and sometimes a great deal to the improvement of apparatus or methods. I remember particularly Ed. Gilliland, of Indianapolis, an ingenious man and excellent mechanic, who improved the generator of my magneto call bell, shortening the box and making it less funereal.

He did much also for central office switchboards.

This was the beginning of the great wave of telephonic activity, not only in electrical and mechanical invention, but also in business and operative organization, which has been increasing in its force ever since, to which men in this audience have made and are making splendid contributions. To-day that wave has become a mighty flood on which the great Bell system floats majestically as it moves ever onward to new achievements.

Turning to Other Activities

My connection with the telephone business ceased in 1881. The strenuous years I had passed through had fixed in me a habit of not sleeping nights as much as I should, and a doctor man told me I would better go abroad for a year or two for a change. There was not the least need of this, but as it coincided exactly with my desires, and as the telephone business had become, I thought, merely a matter of routine, with nothing more to do except pay dividends and fight infringers, I resigned my position as General Inspector of the Company, and went over the ocean for the first time.

When I returned to this country a year or so later, I found the telephone business had not suffered in the least from my absence, but there were so many better men doing the work that I had been doing, that I didn’t care to go into it again.

I was looking for more trouble in life and so I went into shipbuilding, where I found all I needed.

Before Mr. Bell went to England on his bridal trip, we agreed that as soon as the telephone became a matter of routine business he and I would begin experimenting on flying machines, on which subject he was full of ideas at that early time. I never carried out this agreement. Bell did some notable work on airships later, but I turned my attention to battleships.

My Greatest Pride

Such is my very inadequate story of the earliest days of the telephone so far as they made part of my life. To-day when I go into a central office or talk over a long distance wire or read the annual report of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, filled with figures up in the millions and even billions, when I think of the growth of the business, and the marvelous improvements that have been made since the day I left it, thinking there was nothing more to do but routine, I must say that all that early work I have told you about seems to shrink into a very small measure, and, proud as I always shall be, that I had the opportunity of doing some of that earliest work myself, my greatest pride is that I am one of the great army of telephone men, every one of whom has played his part in making the Bell Telephone service what it is to-day.

I thank you.

Early Chronology of the Telephone

1847, March 3—Birth of Alexander Graham Bell at Edinburgh, Scotland. 1854, January 18—Birth of Thomas A. Watson at Salem, Mass. 1870, August 1—Bell moves to America with his parents, arriving in Canada on this date, and settling at Brantford, Ontario. 1872, October 1—Permanent residence in the United States taken up by Bell at 35 West Newton Street, Boston. 1875, February 27—Written agreement between Bell, Sanders, and Hubbard forming “Bell Patent Association” to promote inventor’s work in telegraph field. June 2—Bell completes the invention of the Telephone, electrically transmitting overtones for the first time and verifying his principle of the electrical transmission of speech at 109 Court Street, Boston. June 3—First telephone instrument constructed by Watson according to Bell’s specifications. September—Bell at Brantford begins writing specifications for a telephone patent. 1876, February 14—Application for telephone patent filed with U. S. Patent Office, Washington, D. C. March 7—U. S. Patent 174,465 issued to Bell, covering fundamental principles of the Electric Speaking Telephone. March 10—First complete sentence transmitted by telephone by Bell to Watson, “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.” Between two rooms at 5 Exeter Place, Boston. June 25—Bell exhibits his Telephone to the Judges of the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, on which he is awarded the Exhibition’s medal. August 10—Experimental one-way talk—8 miles, Brantford to Paris, Ontario. September 1—Contract with Thomas A. Watson for one-half his time—the beginning of telephone research laboratories. October 9—First experimental two-way telephone conversation between different towns—2 miles, between Boston and Cambridgeport, Mass. November 26—Conversation over railroad telegraph wires—16 miles, Boston to Salem. 1877, February 12—Bell’s first public lecture and demonstration of his new invention given before the Essex Institute in Salem, where he had lived and had done some of his experimenting. April 4—First outdoor line for regular telephone use installed—Boston to Somerville. May 17—Telephone lines first interconnected by means of an experimental switchboard at 342 Washington Street, Boston. July 9—“Bell Telephone Co., Gardiner G. Hubbard, Trustee,” the first telephone organization, formed. August 1—First stock issue—5,000 shares—dividing interest in the business between seven original stockholders: A. G. Bell, Mrs. Bell, G. G. Hubbard, Mrs. Hubbard, C. E. Hubbard, Thomas Sanders and Thomas A. Watson. August 10—First Bell telephone employee hired in Boston—Robert W. Devonshire. 1878, January 28—Opening of first commercial telephone exchange at New Haven, Conn., serving 8 lines and 21 telephones. May 22—Theodore N. Vail accepts General Managership of Bell Telephone Company. 1879, March 13—Certificate of Incorporation filed in Boston for National Bell Telephone Company for purpose of unifying telephone development throughout the country. November 10—Agreement signed by Western Union Telegraph Co. admitting validity of Bell’s basic telephone patents. 1880, December 31—47,900 Bell telephones in the United States. 1881, January 1—First telephone dividend, inaugurating a continuous regular series of payments to stockholders. January 10—Formal opening of telephone service by overhead wire between Boston and Providence—45 miles. A metallic circuit was first successfully tried out on this route by J. J. Carty. 1882, April 16—Experimental laying of underground telephone cable—5 miles, Attleboro to West Mansfield, Mass. 1884, March 27—Telephone service opened experimentally between Boston and New York by overhead wires of hard-drawn copper—235 miles. 1885, March 3—Certificate of Incorporation filed in Albany, N. Y., for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company for the purpose of effecting intercommunication “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 also by cable and other appropriate means with the rest of the known world.”

Telephone Milestones

1892 Service opened between New York and Chicago, 900 miles. 1902 First long-distance underground cable in use, 10 miles—New York to Newark. 1915 First conversation from coast to coast, 3,650 miles—Boston to San Francisco. 1921 Opening of deep sea cable, 115 miles—Key West, Fla., to Havana, Cuba. 1927 Transatlantic telephone service opened between New York and London, 3,500 miles. First public demonstration of television by wire and radio. 1929 Ship-to-shore telephone service established. 1931 Teletypewriter exchange service inaugurated. 1935 First telephone call around the world. 1937 Connections possible to 93% of world’s telephones. 1938 Direct radio telephone circuit established between San Francisco and Australia.

BELL SYSTEM STATISTICS

Dec. 31, 1920 Dec. 31, 1925 Dec. 31, 1930 Dec. 31, 1935 Dec. 31, 1938

Number of Telephones[2] 8,133,759 11,909,571 15,187,296 13,573,025 15,761,095 Number of Central 5,767 6,147 6,639 6,896 6,975 Offices Miles of Pole Lines 362,481 394,529 428,212 407,454 399,368 Miles of Wire: In Underground Cable 14,207,000 27,769,000 45,116,000 47,639,000 50,783,000 In Aerial Cable 6,945,000 12,835,000 23,777,000 26,425,000 28,072,000 Open Wire 3,711,000 4,339,000 5,231,000 4,562,000 4,590,000 Total 24,863,000 44,943,000 74,124,000 78,626,000 83,445,000 Per Cent Total Wire 85.1 90.3 92.9 94.2 94.5 Mileage in Cable Average Daily Telephone Conversations:[3] Exchange 31,818,000 48,051,000 61,150,000 58,066,000 67,400,000 Toll and Long 1,307,000 2,090,000 2,884,000 2,224,000 2,497,000 Distance Total 33,125,000 50,141,000 64,034,000 60,290,000 69,897,000 Total Plant $1,373,802,000 $2,566,809,000 $4,028,836,000 $4,187,790,000 $4,489,078,000 Number of Employees[4] 228,943 292,902 318,119 241,169 257,443 Number of A.T.&T. Co. 139,448 362,179 567,694 657,465 646,882 Stockholders

Footnotes

[1]“Ahoy!” was the first telephone shout, and was used during the experiments, but “hello!” superseded it when the telephone got into practical use.

[2]Excludes private line telephones numbering 79,612 on December 31, 1938. Including telephones of about 6,500 connecting companies and more than 25,000 connecting rural lines, the total number of telephones in the United States which can be interconnected is approximately 19,885,000.

[3]For year ending December 31.

[4]The employees of the Western Electric Company, Inc., and the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., numbering 34,910 on December 31, 1938, are not included.

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. 1-1-40

Transcriber’s Notes

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.

—Silently corrected a few palpable typos.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.