THE FUTURE OF TRANSOCEANIC TELEPHONY 17 



San Francisco traffic provides an interesting basis of comparison. The 

 distance and difference in standard time between these two cities compare 

 fairly well with those between New York and London. Difference in 

 community of interest is compensated to some degree by the difference in 

 size of London and San Francisco. 



This comparison may be made on two bases not very different in char- 

 acter, but leading to widely different results. In the first, let us compare 

 the two routes as regards telegraph traffic, using as our measure the total 

 number of words transmitted in a single years. In the second, let us use as 

 our measure the number of public service telegraph messages, excluding 

 such telegraph business as is comprised under the headings of press service, 

 Ic^-^ed-wire service and code and cipher messages. In each case the estimate 

 i uuoed on terminating messages and excludes traffic routed via L.'; cities 

 named. Data for the year 1937 are available and this particular year has 

 some further advantage in that it represents something between the peak of 

 the 1929 era and the trough of the succeeding depression. 



On the first basis of comparison we find that the total number of tele- 

 graph words transmitted between New York and San Francisco in 1937 

 was approximately the same as that between New York and London. On 

 the second basis we find that the number of telegraph messages was about 

 seven times as great between New York and London as between New York 

 and San Francisco. The wide discrepancy between the two comparisons 

 is doubtless accounted for partly by rates and partly by the character of 

 business and social intercourse. Of the two the second, which is based on 

 plain-word public-service messages, would seem to be more significant in 

 relation to potential demand for telephone service. The information trans- 

 mitted in press and coded telegraph messages and over leased wires is pre- 

 sumably business of record. Public message telegraphy, as a somewhat 

 closer approximation to the informal exchange of ideas by telephone, may 

 be a better index of telephone demand. 



On the basis of these figures we may speculate that the potential demand 

 for telephone connection between New York and London is somewhere 

 between one and seven times that between New York and San Francisco. 

 Actually, in the year 1937 the telephone traffic between New York and San 

 Francisco was about three times that between New York and London. 

 Thus it would appear that not more than a third, and possibly not more than 

 a twentieth, of the potential telephone demand has been realized. 



If we assume, as seems reasonable, that the same ratio of potential to 

 realized demand exists for all European-North American connections as for 

 the New York-London connection, we may estimate that in place of the 

 five pre-war telephone circuits across the North Atlantic there will be needed 

 from fifteen to one hundred circuits. Which of these figures proves to be 



