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Show TELEPHONE FACTS TOLD ATJ.UNCHEON Interesting Data Concerning ConununicaUon Given by D. M. Snow. The program at the weekly luncheon meeting of the St. George Rotary club held last Friday in the Liberty cafe, was under the direction of the program pro-gram committee, Gordon Mathis and Dilworth M. Snow. A talk on things worth knowing know-ing about the telephone was given by Mr. Snow, and the following interesting history of the instrument was given: "The telephone was invented in Boston, by Alexander Graham Bell, a young professor of vocal physiology and student of electrical elec-trical science. By continued experiments ex-periments he produced an instrument in-strument that really talked on March 10, 1876. One complete sentence was transmitted, the first connected human speech to be electrically transmitted and heard over a wire. From this crude beginning came the agency of communication that 'has made America a neighborhood', and had reached out across the seas to bring distant continents within speaking distance of one another. anoth-er. "The first form of business organization or-ganization to handle the telephone tele-phone commercially was a trusteeship. trus-teeship. It was instituted in July, 1877, by the four owners of the patents, Bell, Thomas Sanders, Gardner G. Hubbard and Thomas A. Watson. In February, 1878, t.lio Npw Tnelnnrt Tplpnhonp company was organized, and the money raised was restricted to the development of the telephone business in New England. In July, 1S78, a similar corporation, corpora-tion, the Bell Telephone com- pany supplanted the trusteeship) for the commercial development of the rest of the country. As there was no adequate reason for the general development of the telephone being divided between be-tween the two companies, the Bell Telephone company and the New England Telephone company com-pany merged in March, 1S79, into the National Bell Telephone company. "The growing demand for telephones called for further capital. Accordingly, the business was again reorganized in April, 1880, by the formation of the American Bell Telephone company. com-pany. The next important step toward the attainment of a national na-tional telephone service was the organization of the American Telephone and Telegraph company com-pany in 18S5. This company was formed to build and operate the regional companies that had developed, de-veloped, by merger and growth, from early licensee companies that were giving local service. "To realize the ideal of universal uni-versal telephone service, it became be-came increasingly important to extend the long lines even further, fur-ther, to carry on continuous investigations in-vestigations for the practical development de-velopment of the telephone art, to make further progress towards the standardization of apparatus, equipment and methods, and to centralize administrative functions func-tions as far as possible in the interest of efficient and economical econom-ical service. In 1900, therefore, there-fore, the American Telephone & Telegraph company absorbed the American Bell Telephone company, com-pany, becoming the central or headquarters company of the coordinated co-ordinated federations that is known as the Bell system. Because Be-cause of its efficient organiza tions, the system has been able to expand with the growth of the country and telephone service ser-vice is unified and nationwide. "The vast amount of equipment equip-ment and the gigantic organization organ-ization employed to maintain efficient ef-ficient telephone service to meet all requirements of a nation of over 120,000,000 people are shown by the following comparisons: compari-sons: "In the Bell system there are: "Poles More than sixteen million of them, enough to build a solid transcontinental fence 30 feet high from New York to San Francisco. -Wirt; More than 76,000,000 miles of exchange and toll wire. This is enough to reach from the earth to the moon and back again more than 150 times, and is almost twice as much telephone tele-phone wire as there is in all Europe. "Cable sheath About two billion bil-lion pounds, an alloy of lead and antimony. It would fill 20,000 fifty-ton freight cars, making a train 150 miles long. "Underground conduit More than 575,000,000 duct feet. This would go through the earth about fourteen times from pole to pole. "Telephones More than 15,-600,000 15,-600,000 Bell-owned and about 4,400,000 Bell-connected, representing repre-senting in the aggregate about 67 per cent of the total telephones tele-phones in the whole world. Practically Prac-tically any two of these twenty million phones may be interconnected, intercon-nected, and in addition, service is available between them and more than 12,000,000 other telephones tele-phones in North and South America, Am-erica, Europe, Africa, Australii and Java." |