The History of the Telephone | Page 3

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THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE
BY HERBERT N. CASSON

PREFACE
Thirty-five short years, and presto! the newborn art of telephony is
fullgrown. Three million telephones are now scattered abroad in
foreign countries, and seven millions are massed here, in the land of its
birth.
So entirely has the telephone outgrown the ridicule with which, as
many people can well remember, it was first received, that it is now in
most places taken for granted, as though it were a part of the natural
phenomena of this planet. It has so marvellously extended the facilities
of conversation--that "art in which a man has all mankind for
competitors"--that it is now an indispensable help to whoever would
live the convenient life. The disadvantage of being deaf and dumb to all
absent persons, which was universal in pre-telephonic days, has now
happily been overcome; and I hope that this story of how and by whom
it was done will be a welcome addition to American libraries.
It is such a story as the telephone itself might tell, if it could speak with
a voice of its own. It is not technical. It is not statistical. It is not
exhaustive. It is so brief, in fact, that a second volume could readily be
made by describing the careers of telephone leaders whose names I find
have been omitted unintentionally from this book--such indispensable
men, for instance, as William R. Driver, who has signed more

telephone cheques and larger ones than any other man; Geo. S. Hibbard,
Henry W. Pope, and W. D. Sargent, three veterans who know
telephony in all its phases; George Y. Wallace, the last survivor of the
Rocky Mountain pioneers; Jasper N. Keller, of Texas and New England;
W. T. Gentry, the central figure of the Southeast, and the following
presidents of telephone companies: Bernard E. Sunny, of Chicago; E. B.
Field, of Denver; D. Leet Wilson, of Pittsburg; L. G. Richardson, of
Indianapolis; Caspar E. Yost, of Omaha; James E. Caldwell, of
Nashville; Thomas Sherwin, of Boston; Henry T. Scott, of San
Francisco; H. J. Pettengill, of Dallas; Alonzo Burt, of Milwaukee; John
Kil- gour, of Cincinnati; and Chas. S. Gleed, of Kansas City.
I am deeply indebted to most of these men for the information which is
herewith presented; and also to such pioneers, now dead, as O. E.
Madden, the first General Agent; Frank L. Pope, the noted electrical
expert; C. H. Haskins, of Milwaukee; George F. Ladd, of San Francisco;
and Geo. F. Durant, of St. Louis.
H. N. C. PINE HILL, N. Y., June 1, 1910.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
THE BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE
II THE BUILDING OF THE BUSINESS
III THE HOLDING OF THE BUSINESS
IV THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART
V THE EXPANSION OF THE BUSINESS
VI NOTABLE USERS OF THE TELEPHONE
VII THE TELEPHONE AND NATIONAL EFFICIENCY
VIII THE TELEPHONE IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES
IX THE FUTURE OF THE TELEPHONE

THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE

CHAPTER I

THE BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE
In that somewhat distant year 1875, when the telegraph and the Atlantic
cable were the most wonderful things in the world, a tall young
professor of elocution was desperately busy in a noisy machine-shop
that stood in one of the narrow streets of Boston, not far from Scollay
Square. It was a very hot afternoon in June, but the young professor had
forgotten the heat and the grime of the workshop. He was wholly
absorbed in the making of a nondescript machine, a sort of crude
harmonica with a clock-spring reed, a magnet, and a wire. It was a most
absurd toy in appearance. It was unlike any other thing that had ever
been made in any country. The young professor had been toiling over it
for three years and it had constantly baffled him, until, on this hot
afternoon in June, 1875, he heard an almost inaudible sound--a faint
TWANG--come from the machine itself.
For an instant he was