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Show FIFTY BILLION WORDS DAILY OVER 'PHONES WASHINGTON About 50 billion words of con versa tion, more than half of which is of feminine origin, pass over the telephone lines of the United Scares every day. This conservative estimate of the wire conversation of Ainerita i based on official reports of the American Telephone Ss Telegraph company that more than o'7,7iA),ooo telephone calls are made daily. America does more talking over the telephone than all the rest of the world put together, but just what per cent of the IS trillion words a year is idle chatter and gossip gos-sip is a matter of considerable conjecture. con-jecture. In 1S7G there were only two telephones tele-phones in the 'world. They were connected by thirty feet of wire. Today there are over 16,900,000 telephones in the "United States alone, with 5 million miles of wire. The United States, with 5 per cent of the world's area and 6 per cent of the population, has CI per cent of the telephones. There is about 2,940 million dollars invested in the country's telephone plant. |