e e Uy ait ~ 19 Te ; 
 Public Welfare and Public Utility Dervice 
 
 Bulletin No. 4 
 
 THE TELEPHONE 
 
 Ol Ol 
 
 Its History and Methods of Operation 
 
 For Use of High School Students, 
 Classes, and Current Topics Clubs 
 
 Issued by 
 ILLINOIS COMMITTEE on PUBLIC UTILITY INFORMATION 
 203 South Dearborn Street - ~ - Chicago, Illinois 
 
 1920 
 
Statistics Showing Remarkable Growth 
 of the Industry 
 
 The Beginning: 
 
 Invented :—1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, an 
 American. 7 
 
 In 1877 there were but 778 telephones in the 
 whole world. 
 
 The Present: 
 
 The United States Bureau of Census figures 
 for 1917 (the last official government report) 
 showed :— 
 
 There were 53,234 separate telephone systems 
 and lines in the United States. 
 
 There were 28,827,188 miles of wire in the 
 United States—enough to go around the earth at 
 the equator 1,153 times. 
 
 There were 11,716,520 telephones and 21,175 
 public exchanges in use. 
 
 The messages sent over these wires in 1917 
 totalled 21,845,722,335, or approximately 211 mes- 
 sages per year for each man, woman and child in 
 the nation. 
 
 The industry gave employment to 262,629 per- 
 sons, whom with their families dependent upon 
 their earnings for support, aggregated over 
 1,000,000 persons. 
 
 The plants and equipment cost the staggering 
 total of $1,492,329,015, this amount representing 
 the investment of the savings of between 600,000 
 and 700,000 thrifty Americans to whom the in- 
 dustry pays interest for use of their money, so 
 that the public may have telephone service. 
 
 (Note :—In the intervening three year period 
 development has been rapid and present figures 
 now greatly exceed the government statistics.) 
 
 Hse Otek 
 Growth of telephones in United States 1902- 
 LOTS: 
 1917 1902 
 Number Companies + Saccon in te da 
 Miles of wire. 2 eee 28,827,188 4,900,451 
 Number telephones .................. 115716520 <2.315,297 
 
 In 1902 the government reported 221,008 tele- 
 phones in Illinois. In 1917 the number was 
 1,070,997. In 1902 there were in use approxi- 
 mately one telephone in use for each 24 of inhab- 
 itants. In 1917 approximately one phone had 
 been provided for each 5 men, women and chil- 
 dren of the state. This in spite of the fact that 
 the first telephone company in Illinois was not 
 incorporated until 1881. 
 
 + 
 
 Small Cost of the Telephone: 
 
 The fact that through efficiency, economy and 
 capable management it has been possible to give 
 the public telephone service at a very small cost 
 —utility costs are the smallest of all prices which 
 
 the householder pays—has been the greatest fac- 
 tor in bringing about universal use of the tele- 
 phone. Like other utility services, the cost has 
 been so low as to bring it within reach of the 
 pocketbook of the most modest income, and this 
 has resulted in the tremendous development of 
 the service to the public. The part of the aver- 
 age family’s income spent for the telephone is 
 herewith shown as compared with other items 
 of expenditure (figures being actual): 
 
 Cent of Cent of 
 
 Cost of Cost of 
 
 Family Family 
 
 Item Income Item Income 
 Food -n. ee 26.8 STREET CAR ia 
 Rent, duel 2 2- 22.9 GAS) 2a 0.9 
 CiGthing? cee 15.3 TELEPHONE. 0.8 
 
 Instirance = ..-25 44 *Miscellaneous .. 25.3 
 ELECTRICITY «07 Total 23 100% 
 
 *Miscellaneous includes vacation, entertainment, gifts 
 and savings. 
 *x * * 
 
 How the Telephone Company 
 Spends the Money You Pay: 
 
 It costs great sums of money each year to give 
 the United States its wonderful telephone serv- 
 ice. The employees must be paid good wages, 
 tremendous amounts of wire, cables, instruments, 
 switchboards and countless other articles, as well 
 as new buildings, must be put into service and 
 investors must furnish an unbroken flow of 
 money into the industry if this is to be accom- 
 plished. If they did not, development of the 
 telephone industry would stop and the present 
 equipment would soon become obsolete and in- 
 efficient. These thrifty investors must be paid 
 liberally for the use of their money or they would 
 invest it in other industry where the interest or 
 conditions were more attractive. 
 
 As an example of how the telephone company 
 pays out for expenses the money the subscriber 
 pays in for rental of his telephone, a. statement 
 of the Bell System for the five months ended 
 December 31, 1919, is herewith presented. In 
 that period 49.7 cents or nearly one-half of each 
 dollar it received was paid out for wages; 16.9 
 cents was spent for materials for maintenance 
 and replacements; 9.6 cents was paid as divi- 
 dends to stockholders; 7.1 cents was necessary 
 to meet interest on bonds and other borrowed 
 money ; 4 cents was laid by to meet emergencies, 
 such as destroyal of equipment by storms, fires, 
 etc.; 2.8 cents went for advertising, insurance, 
 accidents, damages and power; 1.6 cents was 
 necessary for printing; 1.2 cents for maintenance 
 of public stations and 1 cent for rent of offices 
 and plant. 
 
THE TELEPHONE 
 
 Introductory: 
 
 When you lift the receiver from your telephone 
 and casually discuss matters great or small with 
 some unseen person perhaps only a few doors 
 away from you; perhaps a hundred or even a 
 thousand miles away, you naturally give little 
 thought to the unseen forces, the wondrous in- 
 vention, the years of painstaking development, or 
 the great organizations of people, material and 
 minds that have made this act of yours possible. 
 
 Telephoning has become such an every-day or 
 even every-hour occurrence in the modern rush 
 oi our daily lives that it has become as ordinary 
 and natural a thing for us to do as sitting down 
 to our dinners, or glancing through our daily 
 newspaper. 
 
 Development of this Magic 
 
 Method of Communication: 
 
 Yet, behind this simple little act of lifting the 
 telephone receiver from its hook and holding 
 converse with some distant person, there is the 
 story of a marvel so great as to almost put to 
 shame the wonder of Aladdin’s Lamp or the en- 
 trancing tales of the Arabian Nights. 
 
 Beginning less than 50 years ago, the record 
 and the development of the telephone has been so 
 wonderlul, so vital in the affairs of man, that it 
 has actually changed the course of human history 
 and has played no small part in civilization of 
 mankind. 
 
 It is one of the wonders of the modern world, 
 and no less wonderful simply because it has, by 
 the rapidity of its development, become seem- 
 ingly so commonplace. 
 
 Vital Necessity to Progress: 
 
 Throughout the ages the advancement of civil- 
 ization of mankind has been vitally dependent 
 upon progress in two great human needs; trans- 
 portation and communication, the two of almost 
 equal value in the affairs of the world. In the 
 field of communication, the telephone represents 
 one of the great strides forward in human history. 
 
 Methods of Communication 
 
 of the Ancients : 
 
 A study of the advancement of the art of com- 
 munication throughout history is interesting. 
 Prehistoric man, so far a8 we know, depended 
 solely upon “word of mouth,” delivered person- 
 ally or perhaps by messenger. So did even the 
 more civilized ancients of Egypt, Babylonia, 
 Assyria and other great empires of the dawn of 
 civilization, until, as knowledge increased, mes- 
 sages were scratched in rude hieroglyphics upon 
 wax or even clay tablets; later, upon papyrus and 
 then upon parchment, but delivery was always 
 dependent upon the hands of a messenger. 
 
 In the Middle Ages the art of writing was de- 
 veloped; later, Guttenberg invented printing, but 
 it is significant of the extraordinary progress of 
 our own times, that, through all the centuries of 
 the known history of the world, it was not until 
 during the last century that mankind had discoy- 
 ered a dependable way of really rapid communica- 
 tion between distant points. 
 
 The ancient Aztecs and perhaps other races 
 had their rude heliographs; the American Indian 
 used his smoke signal; the African savage his 
 tom-tom code, but these and other methods of 
 the kind were simply make-shifts, for emergen- 
 cies, unavailable for individual communication. 
 
 The celebrated “Pony Express” and other pos- 
 tal systems of the olden days here and in other 
 countries were slow, limited to the speed of horse 
 and coach, dependent upon wind, tide and wave. 
 No rapid, instantaneous system of wide-spread 
 communication was discovered, through all his- 
 tory, until less than 100 years ago. 
 
 The Telegraph and Telephone: 
 
 In 1752 Benjamin Franklin flew his famous 
 kite and captured a spark of lightning, but it was 
 not until 1838 that Professor Morse demonstrated 
 the availability of electrical energy for the com- 
 munication of thought, by the invention of the 
 electric telegraph. 
 
 This was the first great step toward instantane- 
 ous universal communication; but even the tele- 
 graph, wonderful as it was and is, and filling, as it 
 does, its own place in the modern system of rapid 
 communication between distant points, was not 
 and is not a system of personal, individual com- 
 munication, by which one man may actually 
 speak to or listen to another, over intervening 
 space great or small. 
 
 Then, in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented 
 the electric telephone. Every school boy has 
 heard the story of this wonderful discovery—for 
 it was as much the discovery of a principle in the 
 combination of electricity, sound waves and 
 acoustics as an invention, and has heard how, 
 after years of exasperating, disheartening experi- 
 ments the then young professor of a “School of 
 Vocal Physiology” finally evolved a curious ma- 
 chine that one day in March, 1876, repeated over 
 a wire the words: “Mr. Watson, come here; I 
 want you,” and the telephone was a reality. 
 
 The Story of Alexander Bell: 
 
 The story of the electric telephone reads like a 
 romance and is replete with curious and astonish- 
 ing happenings. 
 
 Enthusiastically continuing work upon his ma- 
 chine, the young inventor, with the help of his 
 loyal assistant, Thomas A. Watson, produced a 
 telephone for exhibition at the Philadelphia Cen- 
 tennial. Even then, excepting for the provi- 
 dential appearance of the Emperor of Brazil, who 
 
happened to take interest in it, the great inven- 
 tion would probably have passed back into ob- 
 scurity. Through Dom Pedro’s influence, scien- 
 tific men took notice of the Bell telephone, and it 
 was awarded a “Certificate of Merit.” 
 
 Even after that, however, it was for some time 
 looked upon as merely a scientific toy, no good 
 for practical, every day use, and it was not until 
 some years later, after many vicissitudes and 
 trials had been passed through by Bell and a few 
 men who had the nerve to back his enterprise, 
 that the telephone came to be recognized as a 
 most valuable and wonderful addition to the 
 world’s methods of communication between peo- 
 ple and between distant points. 
 
 The First Telephone System: 
 
 The first practical long-distance demonstration 
 of the telephone as a device for transmitting 
 sound was made by Bell and his associates in 
 1876, when a telegraph line between New York 
 and Boston was borrowed for half an hour, and 
 in the presence of noted men, a tune was sent over 
 the wire by telephone. 
 
 The first sustained conversation over the tele- 
 phone was held in October, 1876, between Boston 
 and Cambridge, when a telegraph line, with a 
 telephone attached to each end, was used for the 
 purpose for three hours. 
 
 It was not until May, 1877, however, that any 
 man had the temerity to actually pay for the use 
 of a telephone, and then a man in a Massachusetts 
 town leased two telephones for twenty dollars— 
 the first money ever paid for a telephone. 
 
 The first telephone exchanges were gradually 
 opened, naturally on a very small scale, in New 
 Haven and Bridgeport, Conn.; New York City 
 and Philadelphia. 
 
 In August, 1877, there was a total of 778 tele- 
 phones in use in the world. That was 43 years 
 ago. 
 
 Millions of Telephones in Use Now: 
 
 So great, however, was the universal need for 
 just such a method of communication, and so 
 efficient and satisfactory a method is the tele- 
 phone, that at the end of the first 40 years of its 
 life, there were, according to the United States 
 Government Census of telephones for the year 
 1917, almost 12,000,000 telephones in use in the 
 United States alone. Several million more tele- 
 phones are in use in other countries of the world, 
 although, the greatest development has been in 
 the United States. 
 
 There are now more telephones in Illinois than 
 are to be found on the continents of Asia, Africa, 
 and South America, with the Orient thrown in 
 for good measure; there are more than in Eng- 
 land, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and 
 Norway combined. 
 
 Chicago, alone, can account for more tele- 
 phones than can the latter six countries. 
 
 The number of messages handled daily in Chi- 
 cago, averages, 2,500,000 ; there are 1,922,971 miles 
 
 of wire in service, the increase last year having 
 been 66,227 miles. The company has more than 
 16,000 employees. The operators are located in 
 175 exchanges, scattered throughout the city and 
 the suburbs. In order to give Chicago this serv- 
 ice, $89,925,000 has been obtained from investors 
 and spent on equipment. 
 
 Illinois, in all, has more than 500 separate tele- 
 phone companies. Their wires now link practic- 
 ally every farm house, as well as the cities and 
 towns, with the furthest reaches of the outside 
 world. These companies are owned by about 
 80,000 securities holders, the majority of them 
 residents of the communities where these com- 
 panies give service. 
 
 The telephone has become so universal and so 
 necessary to our daily life that there is scarcely a 
 farmhouse in the country not connected on a 
 rural line, and new telephones are being installed 
 at the rate of approximately 750,000 a year in the 
 United States. 
 
 Not all this development has come, of course, 
 from the companies which grew out of the orig- 
 inal company formed by the inventor and his as- 
 sociates. After the expiration of the original pat- 
 ents, many other telephone companies were or- 
 ganized, and constructed telephone exchanges 
 and long distance lines, these companies being 
 known as “Independent” companies, this distin- 
 guishing them from the “Bell” telephone system. 
 Many of these companies have grown into large, 
 progressive telephone systems, operating, all to- - 
 gether, about four and one-half million of the 
 total number of telephones now in service in the 
 United States, and thousands of miles of the long 
 distance wire systems of the country. 
 
 Many Telephone Companies in 
 United States: 
 
 The magnitude of the telephone business is 
 amazing. Referring again to the Government 
 Census of 1917, there were in that year more than 
 53,000 separate telephone systems or companies 
 in the United States, operating all together over 
 28,000,000 miles of wire—sufficient wire, someone 
 has figured, to reach from the earth to the moon 
 more than 100 times. 
 
 These companies, operating thousands of tele- 
 phone exchanges in the different villages, towns 
 and cities of the country, employed in 1917 about 
 270,000 people, of whom around 170,000 were 
 women. 
 
 They had a combined investment-of more than 
 two billions of dollars. That was in 1917—the 
 business has shown a steady growth since then, 
 so the figures would naturally be larger today. 
 
 There are between 600,000 and 700,000 men and 
 women of the country constituting the ownership 
 of the telephone system of the nation, they hav- 
 ing invested their savings in the stocks and bonds 
 through which the money was obtained for the 
 building of the plants and lines which make it 
 possible for the nation to have this service. 
 
The number of local telephone talks during 
 1917 was estimated by the Government census ex- 
 perts to be in the neighborhood of 22,000,000,000 
 —more than 63,000,000 talks every day in the 
 year! Such has been the development in the use 
 of the telephone in the United States in only 40 
 years—a development that has been possible be- 
 cause the telephone service of America is not 
 only the most efficient, but the cheapest in the 
 world. 
 
 What Makes the Telephone Talk? 
 
 “What makes the telephone talk?” is a question 
 frequently asked. Well, of course, the telephone 
 doesn’t talk at all—nor does it even actually 
 
 carry sound along the wires. 
 
 ' ‘The telephone at one end of the line simply 
 takes the sound and converts it into certain elec- 
 trical manifestations that are carried along the 
 wire to the receiving telephone, which converts 
 them back into sound again. (See diagram 
 
 No. 1.) 
 What a Telephone is Composed of: 
 
 The telephone proper consists of the trans- 
 mitter—into which you talk, and the receiver— 
 which you put to your ear. The balance of the 
 telephone set is simply the case, box, or so on, 
 containing the necessary apparatus and switches 
 , to carry out the purposes of the instrument. 
 
 Both transmitter and receiver are fitted with 
 thin metal diaphragms. 
 
 When you talk into the transmitter your voice 
 sets up sound waves, or air waves, just as a circle 
 of waves is made in the water when you pitch a 
 stone into a pond. 
 
 Back of the transmitter diaphragm is a tiny 
 metal box filled with carbon granules. 
 
 As the sound waves made by your voice beat 
 against the diaphragm, which is very sensitive to 
 them, it vibrates in unison; the little granules are 
 compressed to an extent depending upon the 
 loudness of your voice, and this action causes the 
 lowering and raising, of a weak electrical current 
 that was put onto the line, through your trans- 
 mitter, when you lifted your receiver from the 
 hook. 
 
 This current travels along the line to the 
 diaphragm in the receiver of the other telephone, 
 exactly as it is put onto the line by the action of 
 the diaphragm in your telephone, and it repro- 
 duces in the receiver diaphragm the action of the 
 transmitter diaphragm—sending out of the re- 
 ceiver sound waves similar to the waves going 
 into the transmitter. Therefore, your voice or 
 the sound that goes into the transmitter of the 
 one telephone is reproduced exactly by the re- 
 ceiver of the other telephone. 
 
 Only a very weak electrical current is used on 
 a telephone line for talking, but a slightly higher, 
 though harmless, current is used for ringing the 
 telephone bells. Neither current is high enough 
 to be dangerous—the talking current could not 
 
 -be felt even if the telephone were not well in- 
 sulated, as it is. 
 
 The Central Station or 
 Telephone Exchange: 
 
 The invention of the telephone instrument 
 alone, or even the discovery of the principle of 
 electrical telephony, would have made the tele- 
 phone exchange possible without the develop- 
 ment also of some form of central station, or 
 switching board, where any one telephone in the 
 system could be connected with any other tele- 
 phone in the system. 
 
 Without this, no one could have ever had more 
 than a “private line” with possibly 20 telephones 
 on it, altogether, to which he could talk. 
 
 The development of the telephone switchboard 
 was a task by itself, but so well have the tele- 
 phone engineers and designers performed their 
 work during the past 40 years that the switch- 
 board of today is a marvel of mechanical and 
 electrical ingenuity, and of efficiency and depend- 
 ability. 
 
 What One Sees at the Central 
 
 Station: 
 
 There are three general types of telephone 
 switching. 
 
 The first, known as the “magneto” or “local 
 battery” system, is about the only system prac- 
 ticable for the small town or rural system. The 
 batteries giving current for talking are contained 
 in the telephone instrument, and the current for 
 signaling the central station operator is generated 
 by turning a crank on the telephone, which oper- 
 ates a hand generator inside the instrument. This 
 is the simplest system of telephony, and the most 
 practical, efficient and dependable for the smaller 
 telephone exchange. The magneto system is 
 commonly used for all rural telephone lines. 
 
 The second system, the most generally used at 
 the present time for large telephone exchanges, 
 is known as the “common battery” type, current 
 both for talking and ringing being furnished by 
 batteries or generators in the central office. In 
 this system the telephone user simply removes 
 the receiver from its hook on the telephone, this 
 action signaling the operator by lighting a small 
 lamp on the switchboard, or by some similar 
 method. 
 
 For large exchanges, such as are in the great 
 cities, what is known as a “mutiple” switchboard 
 must be used. This is a switchboard so con- 
 structed that any operator at the board can make 
 a connection between a patron calling and any 
 other telephone connected with the board. This 
 is arranged by repeating or “multiplying” within 
 reach of each operator along the switchboard, the 
 connecting “jacks” or terminals for every tele- 
 phone. It is a very complicated and expensive 
 system to install, costing sometimes four to five 
 times the price of the switchboard without the 
 multiple feature, per line connected. 
 
 In very large cities the telephone company will 
 
operate a number of telephone exchanges, each_ 
 of which will be designated by a certain name or 
 “prefix,” such as “Main,” “Superior,” and so on. 
 Subscribers connected to one exchange must be 
 “trunked” over to the other exchange when they 
 call for a subscriber connected there. 
 
 The “Automatic” or “Machine 
 
 Switching” System: 
 
 In a number of places there is coming into use 
 the “automatic” or “machine switching” system 
 of telephony, in which the switching between 
 telephones is done by automatic machinery, in- 
 stead of manually (physically) by telephone oper- 
 ators: Another system, combining certain fea- 
 tures of both automatic and manual telephone 
 exchanges, known as the “semi-automatic” type 
 of exchange, is in use in some places. 
 
 In any manual telephone system the cost, or 
 investment, in the central office apparatus is very 
 high, in many cases amounting to as much as an 
 average of $250 for each telephone in service at 
 the exchange. It is, of course, higher with the 
 mechanical system. 
 
 The central station apparatus also requires 
 constant watching and repair, as it is very in- 
 tricate and complicated, having literally thou- 
 sands and thousands of wires connected together, 
 with innumerable electrical contacts which must 
 constantly be kept in fine adjustment. Such in- 
 tricate apparatus is naturally subject to difficul- 
 ties from any extreme of heat, cold, moisture, etc., 
 and expert switchboard men constantly must 
 watch and work upon it to keep it in shape for 
 giving efficient telephone service. 
 
 The Outside Plant: 
 
 Besides the expensive, intricate and delicately 
 adjusted central station equipment, with the 
 operators constantly on duty, the whole of the 
 24 hours, to give service to the public, and be- 
 sides the telephone instruments in the homes or 
 business places of the subscribers, the telephone 
 company must have and maintain an adequate 
 system of poles, wires, cables, and so on, on or 
 under the street of the city, over which it can 
 reach its subscribers to connect their telephones 
 with the central station. 
 
 The telephone exchange is peculiar in itself, 
 and differs from its electrical cousin, the electric 
 light and power plant, and from such other utility 
 companies as the gas and water supplying con- 
 cerns, in this way: 
 
 The electric light company can supply any 
 number of subscribers with current for electric 
 lighting or power, from one pair of wires, or cir- 
 cuit, and the water and gas companies can supply 
 their own commodities to any number of cus- 
 tomers from the same “mains.” But the tele- 
 phone company must furnish a separate line or 
 circuit for each subscriber—excepting, of course, 
 those on “party lines,” for which service the rate 
 is cheaper, This necessitates a correspondingly 
 
 high investment per subscriber, in the telephone 
 exchange. 
 
 How Wires and Cables are Laid 
 
 or Strung: 
 
 The wires from the telephone central station to” 
 the various subscribers’ telephones usually leave 
 the central office in cables, either in the air or un- 
 derground. From the office they may be carried 
 considerable distance underground, or in aerial 
 cables, depending upon the size of the city and 
 of the exchange, and the class of construction. 
 
 The wires, when in the cables, are hardly big- 
 ger than a large thread, and are made of copper. 
 Each wire is wrapped around with perfectly dry 
 paper, this paper and such small amount of dry 
 air as is included in the cable when it is covered, 
 insulates the wires from each other. 
 
 The covering of the cable is a sheath of lead, 
 slightly mixed with tin or other alloy to give it 
 tensile strength. 
 
 Such cables will contain from 20 up to 1,800 or 
 more wires, and are therefore known as “10 pair,” 
 “900 pair” cables, and so on. 
 
 The cable sheaths must be kept water tight. 
 Should water get into the cables it will destroy 
 the insulation, and “cross talk” (crossed lines) 
 will result in the telephones served by the wetted 
 wires, or else the telephone will be “dead” alto- 
 gether. 
 
 Sometimes constant swaying of aerial cables, 
 or rubbing against a limb or other surface, causes 
 the sheath to crystallize ; then tiny cracks or holes 
 appear and a hard, driving rain wets the wires in- 
 side and causes telephone “trouble.” 
 
 That part of the cable must then be “boiled 
 out” in paraffin, which extracts all moisture, and 
 a new section of lead sheath, or a water tight 
 patch must be put on. 
 
 Wiring System Very Delicate: 
 
 Underground cables are laid in conduits, which 
 are pipes made of baked clay or other material, 
 with a varying number of “ducts,” laid in 
 trenches dug under the streets, and then covered. 
 
 The conduit ducts end in “manholes” at appro- 
 priate intervals; the manholes are sufficiently 
 large for workmen to enter them and stand 
 erect; they can be identified on the streets by the 
 round, iron covers lying flush with the surface of 
 the street. The cables are drawn into the ducts, 
 from the manholes, after the conduits are laid. 
 
 Sooner or later, though, the wires must be 
 brought out of the cables and be carried along the 
 tops of poles, to be distributed to the different 
 telephones. The cables end in “terminals” lo- 
 cated in a round metal can or a wooden box with 
 a door, which is placed on the pole, the under- 
 ground cable being brought up the pole to the 
 terminal. 
 
 The Terminals: 
 
 In these terminals larger iron or copper wires 
 are connected with the pairs from the cables, and 
 
these wires run along the poles for such distance 
 as is necessary, to the pole nearest the house 
 where the telephone is located. 
 
 Then a pair of wires, called the “drop wires,” is 
 run from the pole to the house, and is terminated 
 on the outside of the house, connecting there with 
 a pair of “inside” wires which enter the house and 
 are connected with the telephone. 
 
 The kind and size of the poles used depends 
 upon the class of construction, and upon the num- 
 ber of wires or the size of the cables to be car- 
 ried. White cedar poles, cut in the forests of 
 Michigan or other northern states, are used in 
 many city exchanges; others use cypress or other 
 native timber, sometimes protected against decay 
 by creosote or other preservative. The cross 
 arms are often of Washington fir; the wooden 
 pins, upon which the glass insulators are screwed, 
 of locust. 
 
 Pole lines are guyed by heavy guy strand as 
 protection against heavy winds, sleet, and so on. 
 Similar strand is stretched from pole to pole 
 when aerial cable is used, and the cable is hung 
 from this “messenger” strand, which takes the 
 strain off the soft lead sheath of the cable. 
 
 Such, in brief—and very briefly—is the prin- 
 cipal outside plant of the telephone exchange. 
 Divided, as to cost, by the number of telephones 
 it serves, the outside construction may cost as 
 high as an average of $100 to $200 for each tele- 
 phone in the exchange, depending upon the size 
 of the town, the character of the construction, 
 and so on. 
 
 The Management of the 
 Telephone Company: 
 
 The management of the telephone company 
 has a triple responsibility ; to the public, to fur- 
 nish good dependable telephone service; to the 
 employees, to pay them adequately for their serv- 
 ice and to deal with them justly; to the investors 
 who furnish the money to build the lines and give 
 the public service, to produce for them a reason- 
 able and fair payment in the shape of interest on 
 their investment. 
 
 The rates the telephone company may charge 
 for its service are under the regulation of public 
 authority ; in most states, by state board or Pub- 
 lic Utility Commissions; in a few, by city coun- 
 cils or local authorities. 
 
 Where the Telephone Company's 
 Earnings Go: 
 
 The company’s income naturally depends upon 
 and is limited by its rates, as does also the service 
 it is able to give the public. Of the cost of mak- 
 ing its service, 55 cents or more of each dollar 
 goes to the employees for salaries and wages; 
 about 20 cents to 22 cents out of each dollar for 
 material used in repair and upkeep work, and 15 
 
 cents to 20 cents for sundry and miscellaneous 
 expenses, stich as insurance, stationery and post- 
 age, collecting, office expense, rent, light, heat 
 and the hundred and other expenses in running a 
 business. 
 
 Besides the direct cost of manufacturing the 
 service, taxes on the property must be paid to 
 City, County, and State; and to the Federal Gov- 
 ernment on the company’s income. 
 
 The company must also be able to set aside a 
 reserve for the constant wear and tear on its 
 property so that it can replace the plant, as that 
 plant wears out from use, age, and because of new 
 inventions and improvements. This item alone 
 amounts annually to a substantial sum—some- 
 times as high as seven or eight per cent of the 
 value of the plant. 
 
 All the foregoing items of expense and cost 
 must be provided for before the investors in the 
 company can receive interest or dividends upon 
 the money they have invested in the property. 
 
 How Company Management is 
 Divided: 
 
 The management of the business naturally 
 divides itself into three distinct operating heads: 
 
 Traffic, which refers to the employment, train- 
 ing and supervision of the operators and oper- 
 ating forces. 
 
 Plant, which refers to the construction and up- 
 keep of the property. 
 
 Commercial, which refers to the billing and 
 collecting of the service accounts, making of con- 
 tract with patrons, advertising, soliciting, and in, 
 general the “business end” of the business. 
 
 Besides these, there will usually be an Auditing 
 Department, keeping the company’s books. If 
 the company has an income of as much as $10,000 
 annually, it is required by law to keep its books 
 in the manner prescribed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission, and State Commissions, and 
 to make annual sworn reports of its earnings and 
 expenses, to those bodies. 
 
 The telephone company is, therefore, at all 
 times, under the complete regulatory supervision 
 of a national, state or local authority—sometimes 
 under the supervision of two or more of them. 
 
 * KC * *K xX 
 
 The foregoing narrative is, naturally, much 
 condensed; many interesting facts about the 
 business have been omitted for lack of space. 
 The subject of long distance telephone lines—a 
 business in itselfi—is not presented here because 
 limits. of space make it impossible to cover it 
 properly. 
 
 The telephone business is a big business, grow- 
 ing larger all the time; one of fascinating interest 
 to the layman, well worthy of study by those 
 interested in timely topics, and in the develop- 
 ment of the great public utility institutions of 
 the country, today. 
 
3 0112 042800 
 
 How You “Talk” Through the Telephone 
 
 (Diagram No. 1) 
 
 
 
 As has been explained you do not actually 
 “talk” through the telephone, but stir up electri- 
 cal currents at your end of the wire, which then 
 travel over the wire and are converted back into 
 sound again in the receiver of the person with 
 whom you are conversing. 
 
 We will follow a telephone call through the 
 transmitter (the instrument into which you 
 speak) over the wire and into the receiver (the in- 
 strument the person to whom you are talking has 
 at his or her ear) and see what happens. 
 
 Follow the letters on the diagram and you will 
 see what happens. 
 
 (1) :—As you speak into the transmitter (A), 
 your voice makes sound waves. These waves 
 enter the transmitter (B). 
 
 (2) :—Entering the transmitter (B) the waves 
 encounter a button of granulated carbon, which 
 is attached to a thin disk known as a diaphragm 
 (C). This vibrates and makes the electric current 
 fluctuate and vary, as shown by (D), just as the 
 air vibrates in (A)—or just as you make it 
 vibrate when you speak. 
 
 (3) :—Traveling over the wire, the vibrating 
 electric current enters the receiver. There it finds 
 a magnet coil (FE). The electric current causes 
 it to fluctuate and vary exactly as the current (D) 
 fluctuates. It goes on through to (F), or the re- 
 ceiver diaphragm, which is made of iron. This 
 fluctuates and vibrates as the strength of the 
 
 How to Use Th 
 
 Rhetoric, Oral English, and Current Topic 
 classes; Suggested topics for theme writing; 
 Oral English and Current Topics discussion. 
 
 1. A Visit to the Local Telephone Plant. 
 
 2. To What Class of Users is the Telephone 
 Most Valuable. 
 
 3. Methods of Communication of The Ancients. 
 How the Telephone Came Into Existence. 
 5. The Home Without the Telephone. 
 
 re 
 
 magnet’s (E) pull upon it is increased or de- 
 creased, or as you have talked. 
 
 (4) :—The receiver’s diaphragm then throws 
 off the sound (G) waves in the air between the 
 diaphragm and the listener’s ear in exact imita- 
 tion of (or consonance with) the transmitter 
 diaphragm (B). 
 
 Because the two persons indulging in the con- 
 versation, as has been noted, are such important 
 
 factors in making it successful, it is necessary | 
 
 that they make proper and careful use of the tele- 
 phone. It is evident that, if the numberless varia- 
 tions of sound which accompany human speech 
 are to be transmitted accurately by telephone, 
 not only must the apparatus be kept in careful 
 and delicate adjustment, but that the line wires, 
 or circuit, must be absolutely free from 
 “grounds” or “leaks,” or other conditions which 
 might interfere with its use. 
 
 The fact that today the service is so universally 
 satisfactory as to transmission; that one can not 
 only hear what is said but immediately recognize 
 who is speaking, by the quality of the voice; this 
 really wonderful but commonplace result is the 
 best evidence of the extent to which the art of 
 telephony has now been perfected and is applied 
 in practice in the service of the public. A very 
 slight defect will prevent successiul transmission 
 of speech, but of the millions of conversations 
 attempted by telephone every day, the number so 
 prevented is infinitesimally small. 
 
 is Bulletin: 
 
 6. The Story A Telephone Told. 
 
 7. A Four Minute Review of this Bulletin. 
 
 8. What Kind of a Place Would This Com- 
 munity Be Without the Public Utilities. 
 
 For Debate: 
 
 Resolved: That Alexander Graham Bell was 
 a Greater Benefactor to the Human Race 
 than was any Other Inventor. 
 
 Resolved: That the Period of Great Inven- 
 tions is about Over. 
 
 
 
 
 
 For Additional Bulletins Please Address: 
 
 Illinois Committee on Public Utility Information 
 
 203 South Dearborn Street 
 CHICAGO, ILL. 
 
 
 
 
 
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