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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LIBRAR tº



THE
TELEPHONE'S
MESSAGE
mean that I am the instrument within reach of
your hand, a thing of rubber and metal; a me-
chanical contrivance which is, it is to be granted, one of
the most useful of the tools with which the work of
everyday life is done, but still an inanimate piece of
apparatus.
Or you may mean that I am something more than
this. You may think of me as a personality, reflecting
the aims, the ambitions and the pride of achievement of
the hundreds of thousands of men and women who have
helped me to become what I am. You may think of me
as the expression of the romance of a more than nation-
N YOU CALL ME THE TELEPHONE. By that you may

wide service. You may think of me as embodying all the
traditions of the years during which this service has
been in the making.
I am not simply a thing. I am also a thought. As a de-
vice, the telephone is not today what its inventor origin-
ally designed. As an ideal—as a conception of an op-
portunity for service—the telephone is now essentially
what it has been from the first, though this ideal has
undergone a long process of realization, of gradual evo-
lution which has given it an ever-widening horizon.
It is, therefore, of the telephone-thought, rather than
the telephone-thing, that I ask you to think as I tell you
of the early days of my romantic career.
At first I was only a vague idea in the mind of Alex-
ander Graham Bell, a young Scotch-American who had
a school in Boston in which he taught a system known
as “Visible Speech,” devised by his father for training
people in good speaking and adopted by Bell himself
“Finally . . . a telephone first spoke
a complete sentence clearly.”
G

[2] º
Transportation
Library
HE
37 31
B 27
"I was . . . no longer a speechless
babe, but I was still a child.”
as a means of enabling the deaf to overcome their han-
dicap. Then, on June 2, 1875, he invented me and I was
born. That day I became a completed thought with a
body that would make real the life and the power to
grow inherent in that thought. That day Bell found out
how to produce the undulatory current that was essen-
tial for the electrical transmission of speech. That eve-
ning Bell gave his young assistant, Thomas A. Watson,
the directions for making the first physical telephone.
The instrument Watson brought to him the next day
was the first of many devices through which I was later
to serve mankind.
For you may think of me, the telephone-thought, as
preceding a great family of telephone-things—trans-
mitters and receivers, switchboards, cables, repeater-
station apparatus and other pieces of equipment almost
without number—that have been created as a result of
telephone research and experimentation. All of these
Bell's discovery made possible. He soon retired from
active participation in the development of his inven-
tion, but I remained, a vital principle to inspire the
minds of others.

[3]
The first telephone was born speechless, like every
other infant. Other telephones followed in the months
between June, 1875, and March, 1876. Some of them
could utter strange, unintelligible sounds, some could
feebly lisp a word or two, but none could really speak.
All of them, however, were advances in the develop-
ment of the telephone thought; all of them were steps
in the evolution of Bell's idea. I was beginning to grow.
Finally, on March 10, 1876, a telephone, somewhat
different in form from those which had preceded it,
first spoke a complete sentence clearly. This sentence
was spoken by Bell to his young assistant. It was: “Mr.
Watson, come here, I want you.”
With the speaking of that first tele-
phone sentence, I became something
more than an idea—I grew into an
ideal. As soon as Bell proved his inven-
tion practical, he visualized it as an in-
strumentality of service. He saw homes
linked with offices; physicians put into
touch with their patients; the isolation
of farms swept aside; cities bound to-
gether with the bonds of speech.
As early as 1878 this practical dream-
er prophesied:
“I had to . . .
speak more
“It is conceivable that cables clearly . . .”
of telephone wires could be
laid underground, or suspended over head,
communicating by branch wires with pri-
vate dwellings, country houses, shops, man-

[4]
ufactories, etc.,
unit in g the m
through the main
cable with a cen-
tral office where
the wire could be
connected as de-
sired, establishing
direct communi-
cation between any
two places in the
city. *** Not only
so, but I believe
that in the future
wires will unite
the head offices of
the Telephone
Company in dif-
“. . . means must be found to ferent cities, and a
put the wires underground.” man in one part of
the country may
communicate by word of mouth with another
in a distant place.”
The telephone was still hardly more than a thought
—but a thought with vastly expanded horizons.
This idea and this ideal were Bell's great contribu-
tions to the art of communications and to the world. It
remained for his successors to transform his hopes into
realities.
Thus, mine is not simply the story of an instrument.
It is the story of an inspiration as well—of the growth
of the instrumentality of international service of which
you now think when you speak of The Telephone.

[5]
To say that the early years of telephone history were
the years of my childhood is to do much more than to
use a picturesque metaphor. The problems which Bell
and his associates faced were literally those any parent
faces. I was, it is true, no longer a speechless babe, but
I was still a child. I had to be nourished, that I might
grow in strength. I had to be trained, that I might per-
form my task aright. I had to be taught to speak more
clearly, and with greater power, than I had spoken on
that March day when I uttered my first sentence.
There was, first of all, the problem of obtaining capi-
tal, which is the food with which new inventions and
new instrumentalities of public service must be nur-
tured. Gardiner G. Hubbard and Thomas Sanders un-
dertook the task of developing the telephone commer-
cially, Mr. Hubbard supplying the business direction
“New instruments . . . each with
some slight improvement . . .”

[6]
“So I have added to the carrying power of my voice . . .”
with masterly ability and Mr. Sanders supplying the
money with lavish faith and generosity. Capital from
outside sources was naturally at first difficult to obtain.
Investors could not be persuaded that I would ever
grow up to earn my own living and to be of use in the
world. And so there were days of the deepest discour-
agement for those who had undertaken the task of the
telephone's upbringing—days when the child all but
died of a financial malady that was very like starvation.
Even in these days, however, the thought that was
later to become a nation-wide service persisted. The
ideal remained, though progress in attaining it was
slow. Physically, I was a weak child, but I had a spirit-
ual quality, acquired from these men of faith who were

7 J
the pioneers of telephone history, which helped me to
carry on. I survived.
But I had much to learn, in those early years when I
was being fitted for my work in the world. On that
March day when I first learned to speak, the Art of
Telephony was represented by one telephone transmit-
ter, a wire running from one room down the hall to an-
other room, and a simple telegraph instrument to serve
as a receiver. While my words could be heard clearly,
they were not very loud even over this short distance.
Obviously I must be taught to strengthen my voice if I
were to become the instrumentality of the widespread
service of which Bell and his fellows dreamed.
The laboratory became my schoolroom. Patiently,
little by little, I learned to extend the reach of my voice.
New instruments appeared, each with some slight im-
provement over those that had gone before. In a steady,
arduous process that was strangely like the “line upon
line, precept upon precept,” of which the sage of old
a service which enters so intimately
into the lives of those who use it.”

[8]
# -
--
"Great improvements have been made in cables . . .
had written, I learned to widen my horizon—to in-
crease the scope of my service.
This was accomplished, not alone by improvements
in the telephone instrument itself, but in other appara-
tus and equipment that was necessary in order to enable
it to carry man's voice to a distant point. Iron wires—
single wires with a “ground return”—were replaced by
a pair of wires of a special form of copper, hard-drawn
to make it suitable for the purpose to which it was to be
put. As time went on, other improvements were found,
which increased the carrying power of the spoken
word. Within two decades, telephone lines linked many
of the larger cities of the East.
With further refinements in apparatus and transmis-
sion equipment, I began to provide a service for which
“Long Distance” was more than a mere name. In 1892
the telephone first united New York and Chicago. For
some years, this appeared to be the limit of the distance
over which man's voice could travel by wire. The tele-
phone current becomes gradually weaker and weaker
the farther it travels. The next step in the development
of nation-wide service lay in the direction of overcom-
ing this tendency.


[9]
By wrapping a wire many times around a ring of
specially prepared iron, a coil, known as a loading coil,
was made. When these loading coils, invented by Pupin
and developed by telephone engineers, were connected
in the circuit to strengthen it at the proper intervals,
speech currents could travel considerably farther be-
fore becoming so weak as to be useless. The loading coil
principle was discovered in 1899, and its use made it
possible, by 1911, for these speech currents to link the
East to Denver.
Another important contribution to the development
of service between distant cities was the three-electrode
vacuum tube conceived by DeForest. This tube was
made reliable and sturdy by telephone scientists who
developed it as a “repeater” and thus enabled speech to
be transmitted over still greater
distances. This was one of the de-
velopments that made it possible
to extend telephone service from
coasttocoast. In 1915 Boston talked
with San Francisco over a line
3,650 miles long.
The year 1915, which marked
the establishment of nation-wide
not simply the service, proved but an incidental
s to r y o f an - - -
instrument...” milestone to telephone scientists,
who had already set for themselves
an even higher goal—world-wide service. The remark-
able results of their research and experiments in radio
telephony were disclosed the same year when they suc-
ceeded in sending the voice by radio from Arlington,

[10]
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“Through the ether I speed men's spoken messages from continent to
continent, transforming the nations into members of a
great, world-wide neighborhood . . .”


[11]
Va., to Paris and to Honolulu. The intervention of war
only temporarily delayed the practical fruition of these
years of research.
On March 7, 1926–the fiftieth anniversary of the
date on which Bell's first telephone patent was granted
—two-way telephone conversation between the United
States and England was given a public test and early in
the following year, January 7, 1927, commercial tele-
phone service between New York and London was in-
augurated. This ocean-spanning service was soon ex-
tended to include all of the United States, all of Cuba,
and many cities in Canada and Mexico and all of Eng-
land, Scotland and Wales. In 1928, service was extend-
ed to Belgium, and other countries of Europe quickly
“Another important contribution to the development
of service between distant cities ...”

[12]
followed. Now American telephone users can talk over
the transoceanic circuit to twenty-two European coun-
tries and to Ceuta, Africa.
Radio telephone ser-
vice was opened between
| the United States and
South America in Ap-
ril, 1930, the countries
on that continent reached
by the circuit being Ar-
gentina, Chile and Uru-
guay.
In October, 1930,
commercial radio tele-
phone service from the
United States to a fifth
continent, Australia, by
way of London, was in-
augurated.
-- - - So I have added to
. . . keeps the scientist at h - f
his laboratory bench . . .” the carrying power o
my voice as I have
grown up through childhood and youth to man's estate.
But this problem of teaching me to add to the reach of
my voice has not been the only one confronting those
who have taken up the task Bell and his associates laid
down.
Every child must learn to live his life, not as an in-
dividual, sufficient unto himself, but as a member of
society. He must learn to live and to work with others.
Hemustmasterthearts of co-operation and co-ordination.

[13]
-- -
... improvements . . . in other apparatus and equipment . . .”
A somewhat similar lesson was set before me in my
schoolroom in the little Bell laboratory in Boston. The
moment these schoolmasters of mine, the pioneers of
the telephone, had conceived the idea of telephone ser-
vice, it became obvious that the chief aim of the tele-
phone could never be simply that of providing commu-
nication, for telephone service implied inter-commu-
nication. At first, the telephones were leased in pairs, to
afford, for example, communication between a man's
office and his home, and nothing else. Each pair of
these instruments was a little system unto itself, per-
forming its limited function satisfactorily enough, but
not providing telephone service in any real sense, for
there was no means of interconnecting all these tele-
phones so that conversation could be held from any one
instrument to any one of the others.
How to provide this service of intercommunication
was the next problem to be solved in the telephone lab-
oratory; the next lesson which I, as a growing child,
had to master. My training in this direction began sim-
ply, in primary-school fashion, for the first switchboard
was a crude affair providing means of connecting only

[14]
five telephones. These instruments had been installed in
five Boston banks and this elementary switchboard was
a telephone exchange or central office only by day. At
night the telephones were removed, telegraph instru-
ments were replaced, and the wires were used as before
as a telegraphic burglar alarm system.
Crude though it was, this simple switching mecha-
nism was sufficiently satisfactory to prove that a service
of intercommunication could be given on a commercial
basis, and a switchboard for this purpose was installed
at New Haven, Conn., in 1878. This at first connected
eight subscribers’ lines.
It was an auspicious early step in the evolution of a
mere idea into a great instrumentality providing uni-
versal service for millions of American telephone users.
The very heart of this universal service is the switch-
a 2% WSs.
-
-
“. . . that was later to become a nation-wide service . . .





[15]

board, and its history has been written, to no small de-
gree, in the steady development from these crude affairs
to intricate assemblages of mechanisms that make up
the modern manually operated switchboard, and to the
even more complicated equipment involved in making
dial telephone connections.
As I began to grow—as telephone facilities were ex-
panded to meet the ever-increasing popular demand
for telephone service—I was confronted with tempo-
rary difficulties that were not unlike “growing pains.”
The very fact that telephone facilities were increasing
at such a rapid rate in itself created new problems
which had to be solved.
There was, for instance, the problem of the conges-
tion of overhead wires in the larger cities, where heavy
traffic necessitated the erection of pole lines carrying
twenty or more crossarms. These towering poles with
their weight of wires were unsightly and often danger-
ous, and it soon became apparent that means must be
found to put the wires underground. The scientists in
the telephone laboratory, which had meantime grown
in size and in personnel, attacked this problem. Once
more I returned to my lessons—this time to learn how
to make my way through the earth, amid a maze of gas
and water pipes.
My laboratory instructors patiently worked out my
problems. Various forms of cable were tried, many of
them with results that were far from satisfactory. Final-
ly, a lead-covered cable, in which each wire was insu-
lated from the others with a wrapping of paper, was
tried and found far superior to all others. This is the
[16]
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. . . to learn how to make my way through the
earth, amid a maze . . .”
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[17]
type of cable used today
throughout America's
nation-wide telephone
network. Over ninety
per cent of this net-
work's total wire mile-
age is now in cable and
over sixty-five per cent.
of it in underground
cable.
Great improvements
have been made in ca-
bles since their first use
in the early 80's, one of
the most striking of
-- which has been a grad-
ual increase in the num-
“The very heart of this universal -
service is the switchboard . . .” ber of wires per cable.
The first cables con-
tained not more than fifty pairs of wires, while many
modern cables of the same size—slightly larger than a
man's wrist—contain as many as 1,800 pairs of wires.
This improvement has effected great economies, which
have been of direct benefit to the American telephone
user.
These are but a few of the problems solved by the
engineers and scientists who have been responsible for
the technical phases of my education—the men who,
in the laboratory and in the field, have evolved the
mechanism and the methods that make possible mod-
ern telephone service, as the subscriber knows it.

[18]
My technical education has included, indeed, the
mastery of problems of which my earlier teachers never
even dreamed. I have been taught, for example, to talk
so loudly that with my assistance a public speaker may
be heard perfectly by an assembled crowd of a hundred
thousand people.
I have learned how to send my word-bearing cour-
iers thousands of miles without the use of wires.
Through the ether I speed men's spoken messages from
continent to continent, transforming the nations into
members of a great world-wide neighborhood, and to
far-off ships at sea. Through the same mysterious me-
dium I send to the ears of millions the words of the
great orator, the surging strains of a symphony orches-
tra, the up-to-the-minute description of a stirring event
or the tender cadences of a woman's voice as she sings a
lullaby to tens of thousands of children. Subtract me,
the telephone, from your radio set and the result is—
silence.
. . . many modern cables ... contain as
many as 1,800 pairs of wires.”

[19]
The circuits of a nation-wide telephone system make
available the best of programs, wherever they may or-
iginate, to broadcasting stations linked into chains that
stretch from coast to coast. Radio broadcasting is what
it is today because of what I, the telephone, have been
and am.
From the laboratories which have wrought these
miracles in speeding the spoken messages of men have
come other marvels—by-products, as it were, of tele-
phone research. Among these are the electrical stetho-
scope, which amplifies the sounds of the heart and
lungs so that physicians may more accurately diagnose
diseases of these organs, and the artificial larynx, which
makes speech possible for many who have lost the use
of their vocal cords.
It is particularly fitting, in view of the lifelong
interest which the inventor of the telephone held
in work for the deaf, that the laboratories which
bear his name should have developed devices
that are of inestimable value in furthering this
great humanitarian enterprise.
These include the audiometer,
used in accurately measuring
acuteness of hearing and as an
invaluable aid in the study of
cases of impaired hearing, and
the audiphone, which enables
the partially deaf to hear more
clearly.
“... the most service and the But through all these years,
best, at the least cost...” while the scientist has been

[20]
-
- -
|II.
---
--
... communicating by branch wires with private dwellings, country
houses, shops, manufactories . . .”
struggling with technical problems, other men have
been solving problems of a very different sort, but
problems that have been in no sense less difficult. For

[21]
in order to perform the task set before me—in order to
provide the nation-wide service which was the ideal of
the early telephone pioneers and has been the incentive
and the goal of all who have followed them—I had to
learn much more than the mere technical lessons given
me to master. I had, as it were, to take a course in busi-
ncSS.
I had to learn what kind of an organization could
best provide nation-wide service; how to build a finan-
cial foundation for such an organization that would be
firm and stable and still be capable of meeting the needs
of growth and expansion; how to effect economies that
would assure a service within the financial reach of
§§
gºlºgº
EFEEE
-
- - -
. . . to send my word-bearing couriers thou-
sands of miles without the use of wires.”

[22]
all who had need of it.
Here, too, my school-
masters had to begin
with elementary lessons.
No widespread organi-
zation such as that which
exists today was created
in the early days of the
telephone. In the busi-
ness development of the
invention, as in its tech-
nical development, those
were the days of small
beginnings, of lessons
learned by the line and
by the precept. But on
the foundation the n
laid, there has been built the organization which pro-
vides modern America with a telephone service that
ranks as the most widespread, the most efficient and the
most economical in the world.
One person in every hundred in the United States
either works for or owns securities of the Bell System.
One person in every hundred is helping by work or
money to build and operate the wires, cables and
switchboards which are used to give telephone service
to the nation.
The direction of the activities and growth of such an
organization involves responsibilities to the millions of
telephone users of America; to the more than 750,000
men and women whose investments in the telephone
--
. . and to ships far off at sea.”

[23]

business have helped to make possible the service of to-
day; to thousands upon thousands of telephone em-
ployees. I–your telephone—embody the aims and
purposes of this organization. I am at once a visible
expression and a constant reminder of its definitely
stated pledge to provide “the most telephone service
and the best, at the least cost to the public.”
I am a symbol, too, of the individual devotion to duty
that is a tradition among telephone people. This lesson,
in common with my technical and business lessons, I
had to learn step by step, for sound traditions are not
created in a day. I had to acquire a growing sense of the
public's dependence on me. I had to become increas-
ingly conscious of the responsibilities of providing a
service which enters so intimately into the lives of those
who use it. I had to come to believe that, since I could
never know what telephone message might involve mat-
ters of life and death, all messages must be treated as
if they were of vital importance. I had to affirm a ser-
vice creed—a deep conviction that neither storm nor
flood nor fire nor any other emergency must stay the
words of men on their way over the wires; that no sac-
rifice is too great to make, in order to assure dependable
service at all times.
These lessons, too, I have learned. Gradually the
telephone has been endowed with traditions in which
all my men and women take loyal pride. Each step in
telephone service has been marked by acts of supreme
devotion, so that now what members of the Bell System
family call the “Spirit of Service” seems instinctive.
This devotion to duty is a very real and very vital force
[24]
... neither storm nor flood nor fire nor any other emergency
-
must stay the words of men .
to all my workers, and provides the real explanation of
the growth and development of telephone service in
America.
This Spirit of Service, after all, is summed up in me
—the telephone-thought. It is the incentive which keeps
the scientist at his laboratory bench, hour after hour,
day after day, throughout the years—until he solves
some vitally important problem. It is that which gives
vision to the executive and helps him to master the dif-
ficulties that daily arise in the management of an or-
ganization as vast as that which nation-wide telephone
service requires. It provides the unwavering courage

[25

which prompts a lineman to brave a winter blizzard in
order that broken wires may be repaired, or which
holds an operator at her post of duty when death by
flood or fire stands grimly at her side. It is the ideal
that makes the telephone what it is to you—a devoted
public servant, a guardian in times of danger, a faithful
friend.
One other lesson I have had to learn—the lesson of
ever looking forward to larger and larger opportuni-
ties of service. Year by year my horizons have widened.
I have grown with the nation and helped the nation to
grow. My eyes have forever been on new goals to be
attained, on new fields of usefulness. I have formed the
habit of thinking in terms of greater and greater value
to the public.
But in the last analysis my present and my future de-
pend upon you, the telephone user. I am your servant.
My achievements of today and my goals of tomorrow
are justified only through your co-operation, your use,
your confidence.
I am your telephone.
[26 J
- -
‘... that no sacrifice is too great to make . . .
Text by Robertson T. BARRETT
Illustrations by FRANKLIN Booth

[27 J
Printed in the U. S. A.

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