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Show TELEPHONETRIUMPH COMPLETE CIRCUIT FROM NEW YORK TO SAN FRANCISCO. FIRST MESSf.SE By INVENTOR Line Officially Opened Jan. 25, 1915, 3,400 Miles in Length. Transmission Trans-mission Clear and Distinct. New York. From the fifteenth floor of a New York skyscraper, in the office of Theodore N. Vail, president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Tele-graph company, Alexander Graham Bell Monday afternoon telephoned to Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco, sending the first message ever telephoned tele-phoned across the continent. Although engineers and scientists have worked for nearly forty years perfecting transmitters, receivers, lines, cables, switchboards and various telephone apparatus that all combined com-bined made transcontinental telephoning tele-phoning possible, John J. Carty, chief engineer of the Bell Telephone System, Sys-tem, insisted that the inventor of the telephone should have the honor of sending the first ocean to ocean message, mes-sage, and thus it was that Dr. Bell and Mr. Watson were at either end of the I line Monday afternoon. In a little workshop in Boston, June 2, 1875, it was Alexander Graham Bell who spoke and Thomas A. Watson who heard the first message ever sent by telephone. "Come here W'atson, I want you," were the first words ever conveyed over a wire. That wire was only sixty feet in length. The line used Monday is 3,400 miles long. A bit of sentiment that entered into the celebration of the opening of the transcontinental line was that the sixty feet of wire used in the first . ' ' - i , ?' i If.. 1 ' J- - 1 M V j : ' A :) : t "P - ,' I i . . - 4 V- 4, ' r . : (Copyright by Harris & Ewtng) ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL. talk in Boston was spliced into the line Monday, thirty feet of it at New York aud thirty feet at San Francisco. Ever since the telephone was discovered, dis-covered, America, the land of its birth, has kept the lead, using more telephones than all the rest of the world. More than twenty-one million miles of wire in this country now unite nine million telephones in 70,000 cities, towns and villages. All the rest of the world has less than five million telephones. In 187G the longest telephone line i the world was from Boston to Cambridge, Cam-bridge, two miles; in 1884 it was extended ex-tended to New Y'ork, 2,15 miles. Chicago Chi-cago and New Yrork were connected in 1S95, and in 1911 New York could say "Hello" to Denver. In the forty years since the telephone tele-phone was invented nearly a hundred types of transmitters, and numerous repeating instruments and other devices de-vices have been used and discarded for something better, but it is asserted that no single new discovery has been responsible for this latest and greatest great-est achievement in the telephone art. In the two circuits of the transcontinental transcon-tinental line there are approximately six million pounds of copper wire, or about two hundred carloads. This wire is stretched on 130,000 poles, which if they were loaded on railroad cars would make twenty trains of thirty cars each. The route of the transcontinental telephone line Is from New Y'ork to Pittsburgh, thence to Chicago. Davenport, Daven-port, Des Moines, Omaha, Lincoln, Denver. Salt Lake City and to San Francisco. It is understood that the rate will be about $21.00 for a three-minute talk from New Y'ork to San Francisco. Stationed along this great stretch of telephone line the day it was opened open-ed were repairmen every few miles, in the big centers, in the little towns, on the prairies, in the mountains, and out on the desert, ready to splice the wires in case they were torn down by sleet or wind, to solder a break or replace re-place an Insulator broken by a storm or a mischievous boy. Like soldier' on picket duty, these repairmen will be kept on constant vigil, night and day. in good weather and in bad, for It is advertised that this line Is soon to be opened to the public for con stant use. |