Chapter II: Part 2

Another occasion is burnt into my memory that wasn’t such a triumph over difficulties. In these lectures we always had another trouble to contend with, besides the rusty joints in the wires; that was the operators cutting in, during the lectures, their highest resistance relays, which enabled them to hear some of the intermittent current effects I sent to the hall. Inductance, retardation, and all that sort of thing which you have so largely conquered since were invented long before the telephone was, and were awaiting her on earth all ready to slam it when Bell came along. Bell lectured at Lawrence, Massachusetts, one evening in May, and I prepared to furnish him with the usual program from the laboratory in Boston.

But the wire the company assigned us was the worst yet. It worked fairly well when we tried it in the afternoon, but in the evening every station on the line had evidently cut in its relay, and do my best I couldn’t get a sound through to the hall.

The local newspaper generally sent a reporter to my end of the wire to write up the occurrences there. This is the report of such an envoy as it appeared in the Lawrence paper the morning after Bell’s lecture there:

“Mr. Fisher returned this morning. He says that Watson, the organist and himself occupied the laboratory, sitting in their shirt sleeves with their collars off. Watson shouted his lungs into the telephone mouthpiece, ‘Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!’ and receiving no response, inquired of Fisher if he pardoned for a little ‘hamburg edging’ on his language. Mr. Fisher endeavored to transmit to his Lawrence townsman the tune of ‘Federal Street’ played upon the cornet, but the air was not distinguishable here. About 10 P.M., Watson discovered the ‘Northern Lights’ and found his wires alive with lightning, which was not included in the original scheme of the telephone. He says the loose electricity abroad in the world was too much for him.”

Waiting for Watson

The next morning a poem appeared in the Lawrence paper. The writer must have sat up all night to write it. It was entitled “Waiting for Watson,” and as I am very proud of the only poem I ever had written about me, I am going to ask your permission to read it. Please notice the great variety of human feeling the poet put into it. It even suggests missiles, though it flings none.

Lawrence, Mass., _Daily American_, Tuesday, May 29, 1877.

WAITING FOR WATSON

To the great hall we strayed,
Fairly our fee we paid,
Seven hundred there delayed,
But, where was Watson?

Was he out on his beer?
Walked he off on his ear?
Something was wrong, ’tis clear.
What was it, Watson?

Seven hundred souls were there,
Waiting with stony stare,
In that expectant air—
Waiting for Watson.

Oh, how our ears we strained,
How our hopes waxed and waned,
Patience to dregs we drained,
Yes, we did, Watson!

Softly the bandmen played,
Rumbled the Night Brigade,
For this our stamps we paid,
Only this, Watson!

But, Hope’s by fruitage fed,
Promise and Act should wed,
Faith without works is dead,
Is it not, Watson?

Give but one lusty groan,
For bread we’ll take a stone,
Ring your old telephone!
Ring, brother Watson.

Doubtless ’tis very fine,
When, all along the line,
Things work most superfine—
Doubtless ’tis Watson.

Let’s hear the thrills and thrums,
That your skilled digit drums,
Striking our tympanums—
Music from Watson.

We know that, every day,
Schemes laid to work and pay,
Fail and “gang aft a-gley”—
Often, friend Watson.

And we’ll not curse, or fling,
But, next time, do the thing
And we’ll all rise and sing,
“Bully for Watson!”

Or, by the unseen powers,
Hope in our bosom sours,
No telephone in ours—
“Please, Mr. Watson.”

The Telephone.

The proprietors of the Telephone, the invention of Alexander Graham Bell, for which patents have been issued by the United States and Great Britain, are now prepared to furnish Telephones for the transmission of articulate speech through instruments not more than twenty miles apart. Conversation can be easily carried on after slight practice and with the occasional repetition of a word or sentence. On first listening to the Telephone, though the sound is perfectly audible, the articulation seems to be indistinct; but after a few trials the ear becomes accustomed to the peculiar sound and finds little difficulty in understanding the words.

The Telephone should be set in a quiet place, where there is no noise which would interrupt ordinary conversation.

The advantages of the Telephone over the Telegraph for local business are

1st. That no skilled operator is required, but direct communication may be had by speech without the intervention of a third person.

2d. That the communication is much more rapid, the average number of words transmitted a minute by Morse Sounder being from fifteen to twenty, by Telephone from one to two hundred.

3d. That no expense is required either for its operation, maintenance, or repair. It needs no battery, and has no complicated machinery. It is unsurpassed for economy and simplicity.

The Terms for leasing two Telephones for social purposes connecting a dwelling-house with any other building will be $20 a year, for business purposes $40 a year, payable semiannually in advance, with the cost of expressage from Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, or San Francisco. The instruments will be kept in good working order by the lessors, free of expense, except from injuries resulting from great carelessness.

Several Telephones can be placed on the same line at an additional rental of $10 for each instrument; but the use of more than two on the some line where privacy is required is not advised. Any person within ordinary hearing distance can hear the voice calling through the Telephone. If a louder call is required one can be furnished for $5.

Telegraph lines will be constructed by the proprietors if desired. The price will vary from $100 to $150 a mile; any good mechanic can construct a line; No. 9 wire costs 8½ cents a pound, 320 pounds to the mile; 34 insulators at 25 cents each; the price of poles and setting varies in every locality; stringing wire $5 per mile; sundries $10 per mile.

Parties leasing the Telephones incur no expense beyond the annual rental and the repair of the line wire. On the following pages are extracts from the Press and other sources relating to the Telephone.

GARDINER G. HUBBARD.

Cambridge, Mass., May, 1877.

For further information and orders address

THOS. A. WATSON, 109 Court St., Boston.

My Last Public Appearance

But my vacation was about over. Besides raising the wind, the lectures had stirred up a great demand for telephone lines. The public was ready for the telephone long before we were ready for the public, and this pleasant artistic interlude had to stop; I was needed in the shop to build some telephones to satisfy the insistent demand. Fred Gower, a young newspaper man of Providence, had become interested with Mr. Bell in the lecture work. He had an unique scheme for a dual lecture with my illustrations sent from a central point to halls in two cities at the same time. I think my last appearance in public was one of these dualities. Bell lectured at New Haven and Gower gave the talk at Hartford, while I was in between at Middletown, Conn., with my apparatus, including my songs. It didn’t work very well. The two lecturers didn’t speak synchronously. Gower told me afterwards that I was giving him, “How do you do,” when he wanted “Hold the Fort,” and Bell said I made it awkward for him by singing “Do Not Trust Him, Gentle Lady,” when he needed the trombone solo.

The “Gower-Bell” Telephone

In the following August, Professor Bell married and went to England, taking with him a complete set of up-to-date telephones, with which he intended to start the trouble in that country. Fred Gower became so fascinated with lecturing on the telephone that he gave up an exclusive right Mr. Hubbard had granted him for renting telephones all over New England, for the exclusive privilege of using the telephone for lecture purposes all over the United States. But it wasn’t remunerative after Bell and I gave it up. The discriminating public preferred Mr. Bell as speaker—and I always felt that the singing never reached the early heights.

Gower went to England later. There he made some small modification of Bell’s telephone, called it the “Gower-Bell” telephone, and made a fortune out of his hyphenated atrocity. Later he married Lillian Nordica, although she soon separated from him. He became interested in ballooning. The last scene in his life before the curtain dropped showed a balloon over the waters of the English Channel. A fishing boat hails him, “Where are you bound?” Gower’s voice replies, “To London.” Then the balloon and its pilot drifted into the mist forever.

Developing a Calling Apparatus; the Watson “Buzzer”

As I said, I went back to work, and my next two years was a continuous performance. It began to dawn on us that people engaged in getting their living in the ordinary walks of life couldn’t be expected to keep the telephone at their ear all the time waiting for a call, especially as it weighed about ten pounds then and was as big as a small packing case, so it devolved on me to get up some sort of a call signal. Williams on his line used to call by thumping the diaphragm through the mouthpiece with the butt of a lead pencil. If there was someone close to the telephone at the other end, and it was very still, it did pretty well, but it seriously damaged the vitals of the machine and therefore I decided it wasn’t really practical for the general public; besides, we might have to supply a pencil with every telephone and that would be expensive. Then I rigged a little hammer inside the box with a button on the outside. When the button was thumped the hammer would hit the side of the diaphragm where it could not be damaged, the usual electrical transformation took place, and a much more modest but still unmistakable thump would issue from the telephone at the other end.

That was the first calling apparatus ever devised for use with the telephone, not counting Williams’ lead pencil, and several with that attachment were put into practical use. But the exacting public wanted something better, and I devised the Watson “Buzzer”—the only practical use we ever made of the harmonic telegraph relics. Many of these were sent out. It was a vast improvement on the Watson “Thumper,” but still it didn’t take the popular fancy. It made a sound quite like the horseradish grater automobile signal we are so familiar with nowadays, and aroused just the same feeling of resentment which that does. It brought me only a fleeting fame for I soon superseded it by a magneto-electric call bell that solved the problem, and was destined to make a long-suffering public turn cranks for the next fifteen years or so, as it never had before, or ever will hereafter.

Perhaps I didn’t have any trouble with the plaguy thing! The generator part of it was only an adaptation of a magneto shocking machine I found in Davis’ Manual of Magnetism and worked well enough, but I was guilty of the jingling part of it. At any rate, I felt guilty when letters began to come from our agents reciting their woes with the thing, which they said had a trick of sticking and failing on the most important occasions to tinkle in response to the frantic crankings of the man who wanted you. But I soon got it so it behaved itself and it has been good ever since, for Chief Engineer Carty told me the other day that nothing better has ever been invented, that they have been manufactured by the millions all over the world, and that identical jingler to-day does practically all the world’s telephone calling.

“Williams’ Coffins”

For some reason, my usual good luck I presume, the magneto call bells didn’t get my name attached to them. I never regretted this, for the agents, who bought them from Williams, impressed by the long and narrow box in which the mechanism was placed, promptly christened them “Williams’ Coffins.” I always thought that a narrow escape for me!

The first few hundreds of these call bells were a continuous shock to me for other reasons than their failure to respond. I used on them a switch, that had to be thrown one way by hand, when the telephone was being used, and then thrown back by hand to put the bell in circuit again. But the average man or woman wouldn’t do this more than half the time, and I was obliged to try a series of devices, which culminated in that remarkable achievement of the human brain—the automatic switch—that only demanded of the public that it should hang up the telephone after it got through talking. This the public learned to do quite well after a few years of practice.

The Blake Transmitter

You wouldn’t believe me if I should tell you a tithe of the difficulties we got into by flexible cords breaking inside the covering, when we first began to use hand telephones!

Then they began to clamor for switchboards for the first centrals, and individual call bells began to keep me awake nights. The latter were very important then, for such luxuries as one station lines were scarce. Six to twenty stations on a wire was the rule, and we were trying hard to get a signal that would call one station without disturbing the whole town. All of these and many other things had to be done at once, and, as if this was not enough, it suddenly became necessary for me to devise a battery transmitter. The Western Union people had discovered that the telephone was not such a toy as they had thought, and as our $100,000 offer was no longer open for acceptance, they decided to get a share of the business for themselves, and Edison evolved for them his carbon-button transmitter. This was the hardest blow yet.

We were still using the magneto transmitter, although Bell’s patent clearly covered the battery transmitter. Our transmitter was doing much to develop the American voice and lungs, making them powerful but not melodious. This was, by the way, the telephone epoch when they used to say that all the farmers waiting in a country grocery would rush out and hold their horses when they saw any one preparing to use the telephone. Edison’s transmitter talked louder than the magnetos we were using and our agents began to clamor for them, and I had to work nights to get up something just as good. Fortunately for my constitution, Frank Blake came along with his transmitter. We bought it and I got a little sleep for a few days. Then our little David of a corporation sued that big Goliath, the Western Union Company, for infringing the Bell patents, and I had to devote my leisure to testifying in that suit, and making reproductions of the earliest apparatus to prove to the court that they would really talk and were not a bluff, as our opponents were asserting.

Then I put in the rest of my leisure making trips among our agents this side of the Mississippi to bring them up to date and see what the enemy were up to. I kept a diary of those trips. It reads rather funnily to-day, but I won’t go into that. It would detract from the seriousness of this discourse.

Wire Troubles

Nor must I forget an occasional diversion in the way of a sleet storm which, combining with our wires then beginning to fill the air with house top lines and pole lines along the sidewalks, would make things extremely interesting for all concerned. I don’t remember ever going out to erect new poles and run wires after such a catastrophe. I think I must have done so, but such a trifling matter naturally would have made but little impression upon me.

Is it any wonder that my memory of those two years seems like a combination of the Balkan war, the rush hours on the subway and a panic on the stock market?

Memories

I was always glad I was not treasurer of the company, although I filled about all the other offices during those two years. Tom Sanders was our treasurer, and a mighty good one he made. Had it not been for his pluck and optimism, we might all of us have failed to attain the prosperity that came to us later. The preparation of this paper has aroused in me many delightful memories, but with them have been mixed sad thoughts, too, for friends who have gone. Jovial Tom Sanders! How everybody loved him! No matter how discouraging the outlook was the skies cleared whenever he came into the shop. I can hear his ringing laugh now!

It was a red-letter day for me when he hired the first bookkeeper the telephone business ever had—the keen, energetic, systematic Robert W. Devonshire. You must not forget “Dev.” I never shall, for after he came I didn’t have to keep the list of telephone leases in my head any more.

Then Thomas D. Lockwood was hired to take part of my engineering load, but he developed such an extraordinary faculty for comprehending the intricacies of patents and patent law, that our lawyers captured him very soon, and kept him at work until he practically captured their job. And how proud I was when the company could afford the extravagance of a clerk for me. He is still working for the company—Mr. George W. Pierce.

I suppose I did have some fun during this time, but the only diversion that lingers in my mind is arranging telephones in a diver’s helmet for the first time, and finding that the diver could not hear when he was under water, going down myself to see what the matter was. I still feel the pathos of the moment, when, arrayed for the descent, just before I disappeared beneath the limpid waters of Boston harbor, my usually undemonstrative assistant put his arm around my inflated neck and kissed me on the glass plate.

The Coming of Theodore N. Vail

But matters soon began to straighten out—the clouds gradually cleared away. The Western Union tornado ceased to rage, and David found to his delight that he had hit Goliath squarely in the forehead with a rock labelled Patent No. 174465. Then for the first time stock in the Bell Company began to be worth something on the stock market.

Something else happened about that time fully as important. The Company awoke to the fact that the Watson generator was overloaded, and that it ought to get a new dynamo. Watson could still hold up the engineering end perhaps, but we must have a business manager. President Hubbard said he knew just the man for us—a thousand horsepower steam engine wasting his abilities in the United States Railway Mail Service, and he sent me down to Washington to investigate and report.

I must have been impressed, for I telegraphed to Mr. Hubbard to hire the man if he could raise money enough to pay his salary. He did so. This was one of the best things I ever helped to do. When the new manager came to work a short time later, he said to me: “Watson, I want my desk alongside of yours for a few months until I learn the ropes.” But the balance of the conceit that previous two years had not knocked out of me vanished, when in about a fortnight, I found he knew all I had learned, and that at the end of a month I was toddling along in the rear trying to catch up, which I never did. He has still quite an important position in the business. His name is Theodore N. Vail. May his light never dim for many and many a year!

(_Editor’s Note: Mr. Vail died Apr. 16, 1920._)

The Bell System

The needs of the new business attracted other men with good ideas who entered our service, such men as Emile Berliner and George L. Anders and many others. Every agency became a center of inventive activity, each with its special group of ingenious, thinking men—every one of whom contributed something, and sometimes a great deal to the improvement of apparatus or methods. I remember particularly Ed. Gilliland, of Indianapolis, an ingenious man and excellent mechanic, who improved the generator of my magneto call bell, shortening the box and making it less funereal.

He did much also for central office switchboards.

This was the beginning of the great wave of telephonic activity, not only in electrical and mechanical invention, but also in business and operative organization, which has been increasing in its force ever since, to which men in this audience have made and are making splendid contributions. To-day that wave has become a mighty flood on which the great Bell system floats majestically as it moves ever onward to new achievements.

Turning to Other Activities

My connection with the telephone business ceased in 1881. The strenuous years I had passed through had fixed in me a habit of not sleeping nights as much as I should, and a doctor man told me I would better go abroad for a year or two for a change. There was not the least need of this, but as it coincided exactly with my desires, and as the telephone business had become, I thought, merely a matter of routine, with nothing more to do except pay dividends and fight infringers, I resigned my position as General Inspector of the Company, and went over the ocean for the first time.

When I returned to this country a year or so later, I found the telephone business had not suffered in the least from my absence, but there were so many better men doing the work that I had been doing, that I didn’t care to go into it again.

I was looking for more trouble in life and so I went into shipbuilding, where I found all I needed.

Before Mr. Bell went to England on his bridal trip, we agreed that as soon as the telephone became a matter of routine business he and I would begin experimenting on flying machines, on which subject he was full of ideas at that early time. I never carried out this agreement. Bell did some notable work on airships later, but I turned my attention to battleships.

My Greatest Pride

Such is my very inadequate story of the earliest days of the telephone so far as they made part of my life. To-day when I go into a central office or talk over a long distance wire or read the annual report of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, filled with figures up in the millions and even billions, when I think of the growth of the business, and the marvelous improvements that have been made since the day I left it, thinking there was nothing more to do but routine, I must say that all that early work I have told you about seems to shrink into a very small measure, and, proud as I always shall be, that I had the opportunity of doing some of that earliest work myself, my greatest pride is that I am one of the great army of telephone men, every one of whom has played his part in making the Bell Telephone service what it is to-day.

I thank you.

Early Chronology of the Telephone

1847, March 3—Birth of Alexander Graham Bell at Edinburgh, Scotland.
1854, January 18—Birth of Thomas A. Watson at Salem, Mass.
1870, August 1—Bell moves to America with his parents, arriving in
Canada on this date, and settling at Brantford, Ontario.
1872, October 1—Permanent residence in the United States taken up
by Bell at 35 West Newton Street, Boston.
1875, February 27—Written agreement between Bell, Sanders, and
Hubbard forming “Bell Patent Association” to promote
inventor’s work in telegraph field.
June 2—Bell completes the invention of the Telephone,
electrically transmitting overtones for the first time and
verifying his principle of the electrical transmission of
speech at 109 Court Street, Boston.
June 3—First telephone instrument constructed by Watson
according to Bell’s specifications.
September—Bell at Brantford begins writing specifications for
a telephone patent.
1876, February 14—Application for telephone patent filed with U. S.
Patent Office, Washington, D. C.
March 7—U. S. Patent 174,465 issued to Bell, covering
fundamental principles of the Electric Speaking Telephone.
March 10—First complete sentence transmitted by telephone by
Bell to Watson, “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.” Between
two rooms at 5 Exeter Place, Boston.
June 25—Bell exhibits his Telephone to the Judges of the
Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, on which he is awarded
the Exhibition’s medal.
August 10—Experimental one-way talk—8 miles, Brantford to
Paris, Ontario.
September 1—Contract with Thomas A. Watson for one-half his
time—the beginning of telephone research laboratories.
October 9—First experimental two-way telephone conversation
between different towns—2 miles, between Boston and
Cambridgeport, Mass.
November 26—Conversation over railroad telegraph wires—16
miles, Boston to Salem.
1877, February 12—Bell’s first public lecture and demonstration of
his new invention given before the Essex Institute in Salem,
where he had lived and had done some of his experimenting.
April 4—First outdoor line for regular telephone use
installed—Boston to Somerville.
May 17—Telephone lines first interconnected by means of an
experimental switchboard at 342 Washington Street, Boston.
July 9—“Bell Telephone Co., Gardiner G. Hubbard, Trustee,”
the first telephone organization, formed.
August 1—First stock issue—5,000 shares—dividing interest in
the business between seven original stockholders: A. G. Bell,
Mrs. Bell, G. G. Hubbard, Mrs. Hubbard, C. E. Hubbard, Thomas
Sanders and Thomas A. Watson.
August 10—First Bell telephone employee hired in
Boston—Robert W. Devonshire.
1878, January 28—Opening of first commercial telephone exchange at
New Haven, Conn., serving 8 lines and 21 telephones.
May 22—Theodore N. Vail accepts General Managership of Bell
Telephone Company.
1879, March 13—Certificate of Incorporation filed in Boston for
National Bell Telephone Company for purpose of unifying
telephone development throughout the country.
November 10—Agreement signed by Western Union Telegraph Co.
admitting validity of Bell’s basic telephone patents.
1880, December 31—47,900 Bell telephones in the United States.
1881, January 1—First telephone dividend, inaugurating a continuous
regular series of payments to stockholders.
January 10—Formal opening of telephone service by overhead
wire between Boston and Providence—45 miles. A metallic
circuit was first successfully tried out on this route by J.
J. Carty.
1882, April 16—Experimental laying of underground telephone cable—5
miles, Attleboro to West Mansfield, Mass.
1884, March 27—Telephone service opened experimentally between
Boston and New York by overhead wires of hard-drawn
copper—235 miles.
1885, March 3—Certificate of Incorporation filed in Albany, N. Y.,
for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company for the
purpose of effecting intercommunication “with one or more
points in each and every other city, town or place in said
State, and in each and every other of the United States, and
in Canada and Mexico—and also by cable and other appropriate
means with the rest of the known world.”

Telephone Milestones

1892 Service opened between New York and Chicago, 900 miles.
1902 First long-distance underground cable in use, 10 miles—New
York to Newark.
1915 First conversation from coast to coast, 3,650 miles—Boston to
San Francisco.
1921 Opening of deep sea cable, 115 miles—Key West, Fla., to
Havana, Cuba.
1927 Transatlantic telephone service opened between New York and
London, 3,500 miles.
First public demonstration of television by wire and radio.
1929 Ship-to-shore telephone service established.
1931 Teletypewriter exchange service inaugurated.
1935 First telephone call around the world.
1937 Connections possible to 93% of world’s telephones.
1938 Direct radio telephone circuit established between San
Francisco and Australia.

BELL SYSTEM STATISTICS

Dec. 31, 1920 Dec. 31, 1925 Dec. 31, 1930 Dec. 31, 1935 Dec. 31, 1938

Number of Telephones[2] 8,133,759 11,909,571 15,187,296 13,573,025 15,761,095 Number of Central 5,767 6,147 6,639 6,896 6,975 Offices Miles of Pole Lines 362,481 394,529 428,212 407,454 399,368 Miles of Wire: In Underground Cable 14,207,000 27,769,000 45,116,000 47,639,000 50,783,000 In Aerial Cable 6,945,000 12,835,000 23,777,000 26,425,000 28,072,000 Open Wire 3,711,000 4,339,000 5,231,000 4,562,000 4,590,000 Total 24,863,000 44,943,000 74,124,000 78,626,000 83,445,000 Per Cent Total Wire 85.1 90.3 92.9 94.2 94.5 Mileage in Cable Average Daily Telephone Conversations:[3] Exchange 31,818,000 48,051,000 61,150,000 58,066,000 67,400,000 Toll and Long 1,307,000 2,090,000 2,884,000 2,224,000 2,497,000 Distance Total 33,125,000 50,141,000 64,034,000 60,290,000 69,897,000 Total Plant $1,373,802,000 $2,566,809,000 $4,028,836,000 $4,187,790,000 $4,489,078,000 Number of Employees[4] 228,943 292,902 318,119 241,169 257,443 Number of A.T.&T. Co. 139,448 362,179 567,694 657,465 646,882 Stockholders

Footnotes

[1]“Ahoy!” was the first telephone shout, and was used during the
experiments, but “hello!” superseded it when the telephone got into
practical use.

[2]Excludes private line telephones numbering 79,612 on December 31,
1938. Including telephones of about 6,500 connecting companies and
more than 25,000 connecting rural lines, the total number of
telephones in the United States which can be interconnected is
approximately 19,885,000.

[3]For year ending December 31.

[4]The employees of the Western Electric Company, Inc., and the Bell
Telephone Laboratories, Inc., numbering 34,910 on December 31, 1938,
are not included.

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
1-1-40

Transcriber’s Notes

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.

—Silently corrected a few palpable typos.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.