44o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



influence or hustling ability, who shared in the optimistic views of 

 Graham Bell and Mr. Hubbard. While this latter plan would provide 

 the quickest method of meeting the universal demand that Graham Bell 

 was confident would develop,, it might not prove the best plan for the 

 public in the long run. For it meant a large number of different 

 companies, governed by as many different policies, and operating under 

 an endless number of systems. While under one company only one 

 policy would prevail, system, equipment and methods would be stand- 

 ardized, and interconnecting lines built as rapidly as the necessary 

 funds could be procured. Thus it was to determine which was the 

 better plan, that Bell licenses were at first issued only for limited 

 periods of five or ten years, with the understanding that at the expira- 

 tion of the agreed term, the Bell company could take over the local 

 exchange system at cost price, if it so desired. 



Again it was quickly perceived that the true value of the telephone 

 was intimately interwoven in the breadth and scope of the exchange 

 system, and that its sphere of usefulness would be seriously curtailed 

 unless combined with all the rights and privileges that a corporation 

 secures from borough and township, county and state, rights that in- 

 clude the building of pole lines on highways and streets, the stringing 

 of aerial circuits and the placing of cables underground. In other 

 words, that the local value of telephone service was in direct ratio to 

 the physical expansion of the exchange system, and in its capacity for 

 meeting the ever-varying requirements of local users. Without the 

 telephone the exchange system would have no value; without the ex- 

 change system the telephone would have comparatively little value. 



By reason of the very nature of the invention, the right to use the 

 telephone had to be safeguarded as few other patents have been, not 

 only for the protection of the owner, but also that the licensee company 

 might not suffer. A mowing-machine is a self-contained piece of 

 mechanism that can be operated in any field, regardless of the number 

 of or the absence of other mowers. The fewer mowing machines in a 

 county the greater the probable profit of the owner of a machine in- 

 tended for general use, and the greater its usefulness in a farming com- 

 munity. On the contrary, the fewer telephones in a county the more 

 limited the value of the service to the public. While the greater the 

 number of telephones and the more comprehensive the scope of exchange 

 and toll system, the richer the benefits conferred upon the public, pro- 

 vided all telephones in the county are intercommunicating. 



(To be continued.) 



