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Show I How a Telephone Message Travels a Thousand S Miles on the Wires From New York to St, S 1 Louis Quicker Than the Sound of the Voice I I Will Cross a Room, B Special to Tho Trlbuno. BOSTON, Juno 25. Do you know that when you speak Into the long distance telephone the man with whom you talk, bo he fifty, 100, or 1000 miles away, hearo the sound of your voice before the stenographer who sits across the room can hear It? It Is perhaps the nearest approach to the quickness of thought, this; for It takes the sound of speech as It leaves your lips and carries It on electrical Impulses Im-pulses a thousand miles In less than a hundredth part of a second. And what does this Journey of a thousand miles Involve? What are the electrical waves about while the sound waves are making their way to the other side of the room? Suppose, for example, a business man In his office on the twentieth floor of a New York skyscrnper talks with the manager of his exhibit at the St. Louis fnir. Lifting Lift-ing the receiver from lta hook when the long distance operator at "Central" tells him "St. 'Loul3 Is all ready" he says: "Hello " Through tho little sllk-covcred wires that trail from his telephone to the wall opposite his de3k, up to the molding above the window, around two sides of the room, the little word goes Into the office switchboard. From there It scurries scur-ries under the floor Into the hallway and Joins probably twenty other wires In a cable that climbs down the elevator eleva-tor shaft, picking up ten or fifteen more connections at each fioor In Its progress, pro-gress, passing from the basement through the wall to become part of a larger lead-covered cable In a conduit under the street. Impedes the Progress. Here travel Is not so easy as It was In the building, for 1200 wires, each In Its little covering of insulated alr-Iined paper, are wrapped together In the cable and many Influences from outside combine to Impede the progress of the message. But one after another they are overcome and In perhaps the ton-mlllionth ton-mlllionth part of a second the "Hello" has entered the telephone "Central." Horn it nnnmilnM mnro ImnpfllmMllR among tho lightning arresters which stand guard over the switchboard and the other intricate apparatus that surrounds sur-rounds the marvolously delicate mechanism mech-anism telephony employs for bringing together Its sensitive filaments. But these obstacles arc overcome and through the main switchboard It darts lo the long-distance switchboard In another an-other part of the building. Another downward leap and It Is once more hurrying through the cable beneath a busy street. In Its path to the westward west-ward lies the Hudson, but snugly wrapped In the cable It dives below the clustering river trafilc and finally comes out again to the light of day In Jersey City, where, for the first time, It Is brought up through the pavement and suspended from the cross-arms of huge poles. Now Its Journey becomes easier, for the copper thread hung In midair offers of-fers less resistance to the passage of the message than do the crowded confines con-fines of the many-wired conduit. Indeed, In-deed, such a difference does this make that whenever it approaches a large city a long distance telephone line passes around the densely populated sections so that It may stay above ground, a little switching station being provided to accommodate It. But at each station it must pass through the switchboard with its lightning arresters arrest-ers and other paraphernalia. Over tho Alleghanies. Down over the New Jersey meadows and pine lands the little word "Hello" hurries to ascend the Alleghanies. Then It shoots down again to dart across the farm lands and mining regions re-gions of eastern Pennsylvania, past Pittsburg with Its furnaces and foundries foun-dries and over a corner of "West Virginia. Vir-ginia. On the banks of the Ohio it resorts re-sorts lo another cable, emerging on the further shore In the pleasant countryside country-side of Ohio and Indiana and Journeying Journey-ing on over the undulating prairie State along roads which wind through great corn and wheat fields. Now Its flight is nearly over, bat the mltrhtv Mlsslsslnnl still lies netween It and its destination. It crosses the river riv-er on one of wires strung on a great bridge. Then there Is a plunge into a city conduit, a rush Into the St. Louis "Central," out and underneath the streets again, up once more to the aerial line and Into the fair grounds where, sitting at his desk In the exhibit booth, the manager sends back his answering "Hello" before the stenographer In the New York ofilce has time to ask, "Did you get him?" It has all taken but a hundredth part of a second an Infinitesimal Infi-nitesimal fraction of the time required for the conductor's warning cry of "All abroad" to reach the hurrying people taking the express train which, traveling travel-ing as fast as human ingenuity can make It. spends twenty-nine hours on Its way from New York to the city of the exposition. The word which made Its thousand-mile thousand-mile journey In less than the hundredth part of a second was given at tho start an Impulse so slight that scientists long sought In vain for a device which would detect and measure the, very weak electrical elec-trical current In the wires. The word as It hurries westward receives no other oth-er impetus. Repeating devices are included in-cluded in telegraph lines, but the word spoken Into the .telephone must make Its Journey unaided after It has received re-ceived at the beginning the Impulse which Is so small that It cannot be detected. de-tected. But that Initial impulse will carry the word many hundred miles, and In thle fact la found one of the greatest of the wonders of telephony. Not a Simple Matter. To the layman who never stops ' to think of It particularly, getting a long distance call, for a subscriber may .-,eem Just as simple a process for the company com-pany as making a local connection; but after following the New Yorker's conversation con-versation to St. Louis he can understand under-stand that It Is not an entirely simple rnatter. If two copper wires wero strung side by side without a break between the twp pities anil It wore possible pos-sible to telephone directly over them It would be less difficult. As a matter of fact, however, the message passes over five distinct circuits bctwoen the transmitter trans-mitter In the East and tho receiver In tho West five circuits arranged In tandem, tan-dem, as the Bell people say. The circuits are united, llko links In a chain, at switching stations Just outside out-side the cities of Pittsburg, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Terre Haute. Each switching Btatlon has Its switchboard and other apparatus through which the message muot make Its way, but these obstacles cannot be eliminated, as there must bo Junction points In tho I long distance lines, places where mes sages may be turned from one route to another. Whether you are making a thousand-mile thousand-mile call or one of only 250 miles, the process Is the same. The girl -who answers an-swers when you lift off the receiver passes the details of your call along to the long distance operator In another part of the central office, and by "Long Distance" tho telegraph message Is sent. As soon aa the subscriber for whom you ask Is ready to talk, more telegrams begin to go back and forth over tho telephone wires, nnd circuit Is added to circuit "In tandem" until the chain la completed. Then the New-Yorker's New-Yorker's telephone bell notifies him that e'erythlng is ready for the conversation conver-sation to begin. The telephone Is an American Invention Inven-tion and Its use has been brought nearest near-est to perfection In this country. There are some particularly curious points of difference In the loug distance service here and abroad. An Englishman, for Instance, pays for the time used In putting put-ting him In communication with the person ho calls for, while in America the charge Is regulated by the length of tho actual conversation. Again the British subscriber Is often called upon to pay for the time spent In an unsuccessful unsuc-cessful attempt to give him the uso of ' the lines, while In this country no charge Is made unless communication Is established. |