1/8 Telephone Systems of the Continent of Europe 



German speaking (as between subscribers) with that between 

 Brussels and Paris, Paris and Marseilles, or Stockholm and 

 Gothenburg, would be absurd : there is no similitude. The local 

 service in Berlin is slow, but faster than that of Paris. The 

 Central Hotel, Berlin, has a telephone-room, in charge of an 

 attendant, containing three instruments in connection with the 

 exchange, which, during the busy hours, especially the forenoon, 

 are in incessant request by commercial travellers and others stay- 

 ing in the house, would-be users waiting their turns sometimes 

 several deep. It is under such circumstances as these that a good 

 system shines and a bad one breaks down. In that Berlin tele- 

 phone-room the only thing that shone was the patience, under 

 long suffering, of the attendant and customers. At the same 

 time it must not be overlooked that the Berlin exchange is the 

 largest in Europe, if not in the world, counting, as it does, some 

 25,000 connected instruments in the city itself and nearly 3,000 

 more in the suburban area. The problem that presents itself for 

 solution in the Prussian capital is consequently unique, and it 

 would be unfair and ungenerous to underrate its difficulties. 

 But it is reasonable to argue that methods which give bad results 

 with 500 subscribers cannot possibly prove satisfactory with 

 25,000, and it is on the score of persistence in rudimentary forms 

 when an advanced stage of development has been reached that 

 fault may most justly be found with the Imperial Post Office. 

 The overhearing on some of the single wires is very pronounced. 

 At Frankfort-on-Main, the hotel porter, in describing his telephone 

 and the uses he put it to, remarked that before ringing for a con- 

 nection to his fishmonger he always lifted the telephone off its 

 hook and listened, because if the fishmonger was talking to 

 anybody else he could always distinguish his voice and so knew 

 that it was useless to ring just then. If, on the other hand, the 

 familiar tones were absent, he knew that the connection could be 

 got. 



There is some official predilection in Germany towards an 

 eventual abolition of inclusive annual subscriptions in favour of 

 the Swiss plan of a small annual payment and a fee for each con- 

 nection asked for over a certain number. It is considered that 

 an automatic register of the communications had, to be placed in 



