OCR Text |
Show Telephone Manager Tells of Phenomenal Growth in United States Telephone Network The United States now has 50,000,000 telephones in service nearly one for each three persons, per-sons, Dean Williams, manager for the Mountain States Telephone Tele-phone and Telegraph Company, said here today. At a ceremony held in the White House today, President Dwight D. Eisenhower received a milestone telephone. "The significance of this achievement," Mr. Williams said, "cannot be measured in the number of telephones alone. Probably more Important is what this vast network means to our country and its people. By bringing bring-ing individuals and the nation together into a better informed and more closely knit unit, the telephone has played an important import-ant part in preserving and advancing ad-vancing the American way of life. It stands ready day or night enabling friends to chat, or to 'summon aid in an emergency. It joins together the far flung links of our country's chain of defense. It materially contributes in making us the word's greatest industrial nation. News and knowledge, essentials in our democracy, de-mocracy, flow uninhibited over telephone lines to channels that use the written and spoken word, the still or living news picture." Telephone service has grown from its humble beginning in 1876 to an essential part of the life of the community. Few, if I any, inventions have meant so I much to so many people. In no other country in the world has the telephone hern developed so well as to make it available to practically all the people. Through the resourcefulness of the private enterprise of more than 5,300 telephone companies in the United States, the telephone tele-phone has become available to just about everybody and at a price which is well within the reach of all. Mr. Williams aid that much of the tremendous growth in telephone tele-phone service has me since the end of World War II. In 19-1(5 the 30,000,000th telephone was placed in service, 70 years after the telephone was invented. The additional ad-ditional 20 million have beer connected in the seven years since then, and repicsent an in crease of moro than (56 per cent ! The rapid growth experience! throughout xhi country has beer 'even more pronounced here ii Cedar City. In 1946 there wen 1,695 telephones here. Toda there are 2.7G3 telep hones serving serv-ing the city, which is an increasi of more than 61 per cent. On ai average day these telephones an used more than 20,400 times. "The more than 200 telephon companies which serve the Rock; Mountain Empire can be justl; proud of their contribution t the country's communication network," Mr. Williams saic "Operating as they do over th vast expanses of the nation' more thinly populated area ha presented problems not experienced exper-ienced in the country's densely populated areas. Their contribution contribu-tion toward the national defense has been great, since some of our nation's most important defense projects fall within this area." |