The Bell System Technical Journal 



Vol. XXX April, /pj/ No, 2 



Copyright, 1951, American Telephone and Telegraph Company 



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It was on the 10th of March in 1876, seventy-five years ago, that understandable 

 speech was first sent over a wire. Perhaps the words spoken were not so pro- 

 foundly important as Mr. Bell might have wished for such an historic occasion, 

 but they were important at the moment. He had spilled soms acid and needed 

 Watson^ s help. More significantly, the words ushered in a new era in communi- 

 cation, an era that as Bell envisioned would see the growth of a vast network of 

 wires connecting people together in their own communities, and connecting the 

 communities to each other. The short span of seventy -five years immediately 

 behind us has seen his great vision more than fulfilled. Progress has been achieved 

 step by step and, although many of the steps were small, their cumulative effect 

 over the past seventy-five years is tremendous. Today, hundreds of millions of 

 people take for granted the ability to converse with almost any one, anywhere. 



The two following papers, one by W. H. Martin, and one by A. H. Inglis 

 and W. L. Tufnell, clearly illustrate this accumulation of technological progress. 

 They deal with the telephone itself, the instrument that Mr. Bell invented. In 

 other fields of telephone development — switching, repeaters, signaling, and now 

 video transmission — the same story emerges. It is a story of steady application 

 of new ideas, improved materials, and improved techniques of measurement and 

 design, applied to making communication faster, easier, and better. And the 

 end is not yet in sight. 



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