Growth of the Telephone in Thirty Years

1906

By John Vaughn

"Hello, Central," was first heard in 1878. Today the exchanges are numbered by the thousand, the telephones by the million. Various industries, unknown thirty years ago, but now sources of employment to many thousands of workers, depend entirely on the telephone for support. Numerous factories making lead sheathing, dynamos, motors, generators, batteries, office equipment, cables, and many other appliances, would have to close down and thus throw their operatives into idleness and misery if the telephone bell should cease to ring. The Bell Companies employ over 87,000 persons and, it may be added, pay them well. Many of these employes have families to maintain; others support their parents, or aid younger brothers and sisters. It is safe to say that 200,000 people look to the telephone for their daily bread. These figures may be supplemented by the number of telephones in use, (5,698,000), by the number of miles of wire (6,043,000), in the Bell lines, and by the number of conversations (4,479,500,000), electrically conveyed in 1905. The network of wire connects more than 33,000 cities, towns, villages and hamlets.

Such tremendous growth as these statistics show would imply not only steadily increasing appreciation of the telephone, but would also suggest improved instruments, more skillful operators, and better service. There would be no flattery in such suggestion. Electrical science has undergone radical reformation since 1876. Telephony has raised the utilization of electricity to the height of a profession. Of course such advances have not been won without cost. Fortunes were spent in experiment and investigation before a dollar came back. Communication by the first telephone was limited to a few thousand feet. Now, conversation can be carried on by persons 1,600 miles apart. Tomorrow long-distance lines will span the continent; and the day after oceanic telephony will be a commonplace of mercantile routine. But science and money had to collaborate for years before they could work the trade of enabling Boston and Omaha to talk together. — From the "Thirtieth Anniversary of a Great Invention," in Scribner.