Show THE USES OF THE TELEPHONE dinners ordered by wire and business of all kinds transacted hew york san chos that oh well what is il steak and now boon eh ten minutes all right good by john bare a nice apdale of ready mr 11 ie round in ten minutes have choie brown now the cashier behind the deak in a downtown down town restaurant had acted as a middle man in a transaction between a subscriber of the telephone corn pany and the cook in the kitchen and the novel use of the telephone provoked the question ie that done often as the cashier shut off the connection not so often aa id like was the reply accompanied by a smile mr you know is in a hurry this evenin gand time to come in give his order and wait for the steak to be cooked ue can now work ten minutes longer and when he comes in his steak will be ready for him very convenient I should say o and I dont know but what arrange things so before I die that a man can have tubes put in his office and we can send him a stream of hot coffee and a full meal in liquid form why they invent such arrangements just a well as they can carry hot water and stream all over the city but to tell the truth men dont take time enough for their meals nowadays and die sure if they could get their meals without going out of their offices the order for the steak and buck wheat cakes ug ested other uses of the telephone and the reporter found in the top story of tall building three young men in a room with a row of cases on one side aad a row of switchboard on the other the center being filled with tables like sewing machine tables they were attending to the calla of other subscribers hundreds of wires are stretched along the ceiling from the skylight the cases are like cabinets filled with hundreds of brass tags hung on nails and the switchboards are like immense brass sieves standing on their sides whenever a fi the knob of this instrument one ot those tags drops swinging on a hinge and discloses a name and a number an operator seated in front of the tags puts a long brass pin in a hole connecting the and taking up the receiver listens lor the call ahn the name and he number and the name of the person called far are written on a slip of paper which is taken to the switchboard where another long brass pin is stuck in a hole making another connection ahat donean operator seated at one of the small tables raps a knob rapidly and the connection being perfect the he af the instrument of ohp person called for Is set ringing in UK daytime thirteen girls and seven boys are kept busy answering the calls and the ibsan her who imagines tint bo is raising perfect din in that room hi call is not answered th time ue amses on the knob of h la a instrument ho il ringing ring a bell Is mistaken not a bell is rung in that room the tae that disio closen his name and number drops with a faint click and he could not any morea oine in that room if ha rattled avs knob all day we can conduct a circuit n a half H minute an operator said although it complicated that is calls for another sub who has a name wo aaa understand der stand thiera are some names hat would trouble the well any body laugh all day if you should stay here till my sides achl at borne oth names ballel for then into ai if they were shouting to tho they are calling forand when we get tho ama it is all jumbled up all that if necessary la to peak in an ordinary tone but honestly ive had such queer name all jumbled up that I get them out of my mind several times they bare been in my dreams and I have waked up shouting thet wa used to talk pretty loud here at fint but were been toned down by tha manager who uses the telephones every day almost everybody uses his tele phone omo time in the day but the idrus men wholesale groceries express men steamboat men ers print erg and bookbinders use their instruments most in this section the fiah dealers begin early in the morning calling for dealers up town and the hotels then as geon as tho new haven boat arrives twenty or more men are called for in succession to notify them that they have freight on board then come the express agents they call all day long aad so do the steamboat and railroad agents the retail drug fists call for the wholesale druggists and order goods and the wholesale groceries keep us kusy all day the lishers lish and men seem to be every two or three minutes do they talk long not more than five minute sometimes one subscriber will read a letter to another but the longest time that they take is not more than quarter of an hour some messages must be peculiar yes they are but we are not supposed to be listening to them in fact we hare too much to do to listen to them but sometimes when we listen to ascertain if the talking is stopped so as to break the circuit we hear the fag end of a conversation I remember one night when somebody had called for sandy spencers restaurant I heard gen arthur is going to washington to night lie wanted to know where he could get some good oysters on the way to the depot and I directed him to your clace look out for him and treat im well and the answer waa all right I know him and will treat him first rate |