The Bell System
The needs of the new business attracted other men with good ideas who entered our service, such men as Emile Berliner and George L. Anders and many others. Every agency became a center of inventive activity, each with its special group of ingenious, thinking men—every one of whom contributed something, and sometimes a great deal to the improvement of apparatus or methods. I remember particularly Ed. Gilliland, of Indianapolis, an ingenious man and excellent mechanic, who improved the generator of my magneto call bell, shortening the box and making it less funereal.
He did much also for central office switchboards.
This was the beginning of the great wave of telephonic activity, not only in electrical and mechanical invention, but also in business and operative organization, which has been increasing in its force ever since, to which men in this audience have made and are making splendid contributions. To-day that wave has become a mighty flood on which the great Bell system floats majestically as it moves ever onward to new achievements.