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Show Progress fioted In Telephone Growth In 40 Years !v yorty years ago on June 17, v , -,914 communications history oti was' made in the Mountain i' states Telephone and Telegraph ' rompany territory when con-snCtion con-snCtion of the nation's first S Lnscontinental long distance telephone system was complet- d on the Utah-Nevada state i lines at Wendover. , on January 25, 1915, the w eW system was opened for commercial use with three mes-! mes-! sage circuits in operation. The ' first call was made by Alexan-v! Alexan-v! der Graham Bell, the inventor ''to 0f the telephone, who talked tt I from New York over the first telephone instrument he de-w, de-w, veloped to Thomas Watson, his (assistant in making the instru-merit, instru-merit, who was in San Francis- co. Mr. Bell repeated his fam- ous words, "Mr. Watson, come I here, I want you" and this I I time Mr. Watson replied, "Sor-j "Sor-j ; ry, Mr. Bell, I can't, I am too far away. The most interesting part of the construction took place from f Salt Lake City west, where it was necessary to build a completely com-pletely new pole line along this section to support the new copper cop-per lines. The choice of a route either around the south end of the Great Salt Lake and across the salt flats or to the north 1 1 through Ogden (60 miles longer m distance) was a difficult de-mi,' de-mi,' cision to make. However, after I considerable testing and re-I re-I search by company engineers. the shorter route through Salt Lake City was chosen. In the past forty years we m have seen the long distance net- work grow irom only three mes- sage circuits carrying only a iew transconfinental messages to thousands of circuits carry-I ing millions of calls per day. Constant engineering, research and improved manufacturing techniques by the Bell System, Bell Laboratories and Western Electric Company, have made this rapid development possible. The clarity with which one's voice is transmitted across the miles has been constantly improved im-proved through the years to the point that today a person can speak into a telephone in a normal nor-mal voice and be heard distinctly dis-tinctly whether calling across town, the state or the nation. The speed with which long distance calls are completed has come in for some substantial improvements, too. For example, ex-ample, today it requires less than two minutes on the average aver-age to complete a call throughout through-out the Bell System; this is five times faster than in 1920. Another important factor in the development and expansion of long distance facilities is the effect it has had in reducing the cost to the telephone user for this service. In 1915 the charge for a three-minute, daytime, day-time, station-to-station call from New York to San Farncisco was $20.70. Today the same call can be completed for only $2.50. |