CONQUEST OF DISTANCE BY WIRE TELEPHONY 375 



The great organizational achievement was, of course, the creation of the 

 Research Branch of the Western's Engineering Department, early in 1911. 

 Jewett had important responsibilities in this planning, working in conjunc- 

 tion with Messrs. Carty and Gherardi of the American Company and 

 Messrs. Scribner and Colpitts of the Western Electric Company. Jewett 

 was also active in recruiting personnel. His most fruitful contribution to 

 this phase of effort was the engagement of Dr. Harold D. Arnold, who 

 eventually succeeded Colpitts as the Research Engmeer, and who might 

 have risen to positions of even greater responsibility but for his untimely 

 death in 1933. The hiring of Dr. Arnold was the result of personal nego- 

 tiations with Professor Robert A. Millikan of Chicago University, an old 

 friend and former associate when Jewett was studying for his doctor's 

 degree, and who had become widely recognized as a leading American ex- 

 pert in the whole realm of electronic physics. In a 1931 radio address by 

 Millikan, Jewett's statement to him regarding the requirements for a satis- 

 factory telephone repeater was quoted as follows: 



"... Such a device, in order to follow all of the minute modulations of the hu- 

 man voice must obviously be practically inertialess, and I don't see that we are 

 likely to get such an inertialess moving part except by utilizing somehow these 

 electron streams which you have been playing with here in your research work in 

 physics for the past ten years. . . ." 



Millikan was requested to recommend a man whose familiarity with the 

 electronic technique and whose character would qualify him as being com- 

 petent to attack the Telephone Company's research problems on repeaters. 

 In due course Millikan recommended Arnold, who was then working in the 

 Ryerson laboratory for his doctor's degree, and Jewett sponsored him. He 

 reported for work with the new Research Branch of the Western Electric 

 Company early in January 1911, knowing what was expected of him. 

 Arnold's outstanding personal contributions to the project, as discussed 

 later, fully justified Millikan's confidence and Jewett's expectations. 



The first Western Electric organization chart to show the new Research 

 Branch is that dated January 1, 1912, page 404. The chart on page 405 

 shows the complete engineermg personnel of the departments for which 

 Jewett became responsible on April 1, 1912, as Assistant Chief Engineer. 

 Another chart dated July 1, 1912, page 406, shows Jewett's departments 

 in relation to the complete Engineering Department of the Western Elec- 

 tric Company. 



B. ACHIEVING TRANSCONTINENTAL TELEPHONE 



This section of the story summarizes the significant research and de- 

 velopment efforts that solved the basic problems of transcontinental tele- 



