420 BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL 



of a New York to San Francisco circuit, for our Operating Department is 

 already studying the subject of connecting the telegraph system of the 

 Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company with our own, with a view of 

 making a very important leased telegraph line contract. The ofhcials of the 

 American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Pacific Telephone 

 Company are actually at this time in consultation about this matter. 



In addition to this, I have been advised unofificially that a most important 

 customer of ours, a large brokerage firm of Boston, Messrs. Hornblower 

 and Weeks, who pay to us and our associate companies as much as $65,000 

 a year for telephone and telegraph service, have written us asking whether 

 within the next two years we will be able to furnish to them in addition to 

 the extensive telegraph service which they now have, extending from New 

 York to Boston, Chicago and Duluth and many other places, a much more 

 extended telegraph service. The new places which they wish to reach are 

 Butte, Montana; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Tacoma, Washing- 

 ton; San Francisco, California; Los Angeles, California; and Kansas City, 

 Missouri. While this proposed contract and this inquiry relate to telegraph 

 circuits, it should be borne in mind that our telegraph service is almost 

 uniformly conducted over telephone lines, over which speech is being trans- 

 mitted at the same time telegraph messages are sent, so that the construc- 

 tion of lines to these most distant points for telegraph purposes would be 

 rendered more economical if they could be also used for transmitting speech. 



It looks to us now as though the possibilities of loaded No. 8's for trans- 

 mitting speech would be exhausted when we reach Denver and that to 

 extend our service beyond, we must have the repeater. As it now appears, 

 we think we may soon know how to accomplish speech without the aid of 

 the repeater as far as Denver, and having done this, all that can stand in 

 the way of a New York-San Francisco talk and of a talk to all parts of the 

 United States is the application of the improved repeater to loaded circuits. 



One additional argument making for vigorous work upon the develop- 

 ment of a more powerful repeater I call to your particular attention. At the 

 present time scientists in Germany, France and Italy and a number of able 

 experimenters in America are at work upon the problem of wireless tele- 

 phony. While this branch of the art seems at present to be rather remote 

 in its prospects of success, a most powerful impetus would be given to it 

 if a suitable telephone repeater were available. Whoever can supply and 

 control the necessary telephone repeater will exert a dominating influence 

 in the art of wireless telephony when it is developed. The lack of such a 

 repeater for the art of wireless telephony and the number of able people 

 at work upon that art create a situation which may result in some of these 

 outsiders developing a telephone repeater before we have obtained one 

 ourselves, unless we adopt vigorous measures from now on. A successful 



