DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 497 



That some among the principal Bell licensees had much to learn 

 concerning telephone problems is well illustrated by the published 

 statement of the president of one of the most prominent companies. 

 In 1883, he was quoted concerning the need of long-distance service, 

 as follows: 



In the first place it has never been demonstrated that a continuous wire of 

 one hundred miles is necessary. Such a wire has never been called for or de- 

 manded for any purpose, financial or otherwise. How could it pay? You may 

 accept as a fact that no system of telephony which extends beyond a radius of 

 twenty or thirty miles from any city, however large, will prove a paying invest- 

 ment. For purely commercial or financial interests, the telephone will not come 

 into favor as a medium of direct transmission between large cities. The tele- 

 phone, like any other enterprise, is valuable so long as it pays, and when it 

 ceases to prove profitable in a pecuniary point of view, its scientific uses will 

 not avail much. To sum up the whole matter, the value of the telephone is 

 confined, as I have mentioned, within a certain radius — that is where it has 

 many lines, and beyond that it has no money earning-capacity. 



Yet within a year from the publication of that statement a num- 

 ber of toll lines, each more than a hundred miles in length, were in 

 operation, notably one from Denver to Pueblo, in Colorado, one hun- 

 dred and eleven miles long. This line was built with only 2,619 poles, 

 and cost only about $13,000. Under present methods of construction 

 a line of corresponding length and built in that section of country 

 would probably include 4,900 poles and would cost about $90,000, in- 

 cluding a heavy copper circuit. 



Another apt illustration is found in the interview given in 1883, 

 by the president of two large Bell companies, and who was called ' the 

 leading practical expert of the country.' 



To talk over the 1,200 miles between Chicago and New York there must be 

 used either a compound wire or an iron one several times as heavy — an imprac- 

 ticable size. The copper wire would require about 36 poles to the mile, and I 

 have roughly estimated its cost at $400,000. Only one wire could be used upon 

 one set of poles, for even at the extreme ends of long cross arms, at such a dis- 

 tance what was said to one wire would be heard on the other and vice versa, 

 owing to induction. In fact we find it impracticable for this reason to put 

 more than one wire on one set of poles for distances greater than three miles — 

 four miles being the very limit, even if far apart. 



V. The First Mutual Telephone Exchange 



On Friday evening, April 27, 1877, twenty-nine years ago, Alex- 

 ander Graham Bell delivered a lecture on his electric-speaking tele- 

 phone at the opera house in New Haven, Connecticut, and also ad- 

 dressed audiences in Hartford and in Middletown, with the aid of 

 telephones connected to a telegraph circuit loaned by the Atlantic and 

 Pacific Telegraph Company. Mr. Frederick Gower delivered the lec- 

 ture in Hartford, and Mr. Thomas A. Watson was in charge in Middle- 

 town. After giving a number of interesting illustrations of the serv- 

 iceability of the telephone, and the ease with which conversation could 

 be carried on over considerable distances, Dr. Bell claimed that the 

 time was coming when a telephone in every house would be considered 



vol. Lxvni. — 32. 



