VOICE VOYAGES BY THE GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 



509 



was a practical, commercial, dependable, 

 usable instrument developed. 



From the settlement with the Western 

 Union the history of the business is well 

 known ; its progress is familiar to you 

 all, and this evening you have had a dem- 

 onstration of what can now be done and 

 indications of future possibilities. 



the; battle of david and goijath 



The most important single event in the 

 history of the telephone business may be 

 of interest. 



The telephone patents had been offered 

 to the Western Union, but the offer was 

 declined. Through the Gold and Stock 

 Telegraph Company, the Western Union 

 was doing a profitable local private-line 

 business, using printing telegraph instru- 

 ments. The first development of the 

 telephone was for use on private lines, 

 replacing the printing instruments. When 

 the Western Union realized this, to pro- 

 tect its business, it entered the telephone 

 business in competition with the Bell, 

 operating under various patents which 

 it claimed were independent of the Bell 

 patents. 



The Bell interests were devoting their 

 energies to developing telephone-exchange 

 business. The Western Union, through 

 its prestige and power, had for a little 

 while a seeming advantage. The fight 

 was a David and Goliath affair. The 

 Western Union was the largest and most 

 powerful corporation of the time — rela- 

 tively greater than anything that exists 

 today. 



Eventually a compromise was pro- 

 posed. The Western Union believed the 

 great future of the telephone to be in 

 private-line use ; the Bell believed it to be 

 in the exchange service, which is in fact 

 a system of private lines from the cen- 

 tral office to each subscriber. By means 

 of switchboard and trunk lines any sub- 

 scriber's private line can be connected 

 with any other subscriber's private line, 

 constituting a private line from subscriber 

 to subscriber. 



The negotiations hung on the condition 

 denying to the Bell interests the right to 

 connect their exchanges by means of toll 

 lines. Few had faith in the future of the 

 toll lines or their value as compared with 



the private lines, but if long-distance con- 

 versation should be developed the West- 

 ern Union feared it might be a menace to 

 the telegraph business. Time has demon- 

 strated that the telephone can never be 

 substituted for the telegraph instrument; 

 that the long-distance telephone is not 

 competitive with telegraphy, but has a 

 distinct field of its own ; that the tele- 

 phone system is supplementary to, not 

 competitive with, the telegraph system. 



The prospects for' the future of toll 

 lines or distant speaking — the idea of 

 carrying the voice any great distance — 

 met with little serious consideration, and 

 the idea of speaking across continents 

 met with ridicule. Our engineers, at a 

 considerably later period, thought it 

 might be possible to talk to Chicago, if 

 we had a big enough wire ; but the big- 

 ness was prohibitive. 



The conferees of the Bell were divided 

 about the toll business ; some of them 

 tired of the contest, preferred half a loaf 

 in peace and comfort, rather than a strug- 

 gle for a whole loaf ; if yielding would 

 bring about a settlement, some were will- 

 ing to yield. To me the idea of yielding 

 the toll-line use meant the curtailment of 

 our future, the absolute interdiction of 

 anything like a "system." 



At the end of a nearly all-night session 

 on one of the Sound boats en route for 

 New York, we had a unanimous commit- 

 tee, who determined the Bell should re- 

 tain the exclusive and unlimited right to 

 telephones for exchange service with a 

 15-mile radius, and for conversational 

 purposes, any distance, but willing to 

 yield to the Western Union the exclusive 

 right to the telegraph business and to 

 private lines. On this the Bell stood, ex- 

 cept that the private-line right was made 

 non-exclusive, and the settlement made 

 on these lines determined the basis for 

 the telephone development. 



THE REWARD OF RESEARCH 



The present development of the tele- 

 phone is not due to disunited effort, al- 

 though many and valuable suggestions 

 and inventions have been either concur- 

 rently or independently developed outside 

 the Bell system. It is due to the central- 

 ized, cooperative coordinated work of the 



