With the Bell receiver and the Blake transmitter a good practical telephone system may be constructed, but the improvements which have been made in the short life of the telephone are beyond adequate description, or even mention. They relate to the call bell, the battery, the switchboard, meters for registering calls, conductors, conduits, connections, lightning arresters, switches, anti-induction devices, repeaters, and systems. Among those most prominently identified with its development are Bell, Edison, Berliner, Hughes, Gray, Dolbear and Phelps. The activity in this field is best illustrated by the fact that the art of telephony, begun practically in 1876, has at the end of the Nineteenth Century grown into some 3,000 United States patents on the subject.
FIG. 63.—TELEPHONE EXCHANGE.
That which has given the telephone its greatest commercial value is the “exchange” system, by which at a central office any member of a telephonic community may be instantly put into communication with any other member of that community. For this purpose, see [Fig. 63], a continuous switchboard is arranged along the side of a large room and occupies most of that side of the wall. It comprises a great array of annunciator drops, spring jacks with plug seats, and connecting cords with metal plugs at their opposite ends. Each subscriber is connected to his own spring jack and annunciator drop, and his call to central office (from his magneto-bell) throws down the annunciator drop which bears the number of his telephone, and announces to the attendant his desire to communicate with another. To insure the attention of the attendant, a tiny electric lamp is by the same action lighted directly in front of her, which acts as a pilot signal to call her attention to the drop. The attendant now puts a plug in that spring jack, which automatically restores the drop, and she then asks the number which the subscriber wants, and, upon ascertaining this, puts the plug at the other end of the connecting cord into the spring jack of the subscriber wanted, and by this action disconnects her own telephone. As every telephone subscriber has in the central office an apparatus exclusively his own, it will be seen that a telephone community of several thousands of subscribers involves an imposing array of multiple connections, and a great expense in construction. Girls are chosen as exchange attendants because their voices are clearer. Every telephone jack, however, does not have its Jill, for each girl has charge of a hundred or more jacks, and wears constantly on her head a telephone of special shape, embracing her head like a child’s hoop comb, but terminating with an ear-piece at one end that covers one ear. She is too busy to waste time in adjusting an ordinary telephone to her ear, and so wears one of special design all the time.
In the twentieth annual report of the American Bell Telephone Company, for the year 1899, the number of telephones in use January 1, 1900, by that company alone, in the United States, was 1,580,101; the miles of wire were 1,016,777, and the daily connections for persons using the telephone were 5,173,803. The gross earnings of the company were $5,760,106.45, and it paid in dividends $3,882,945. The total number of exchange stations of the Bell Company in the principal countries of the world are: United States, 632,946; Germany, 212,121; Great Britain, 112,840; Sweden, 63,685; France, 44,865; Switzerland, 35,536; Russia, 26,865; Austria, 26,664; Norway, 25,376. The United States has nearly 85,000 more than all the others put together.
Since the expiration of the Bell patents many smaller companies have sprung up, and the number of telephones in use has more than doubled in the last five years. Long distance telephony is now carried on up to nearly 2,000 miles, and one may to-day lie in bed in New York and listen to a concert in Chicago, and the vocal exchange of business and social intercourse between cities has become so large a feature of modern life as to justify the organization of a great company for this service alone.
In the Old Testament, Book of Job, xxxviii. chapter, 35th verse, it is written: ““Canst thou send lightnings that they may go and say unto thee—‘Here we are?’”” For thousands of years this challenge to Job has been looked upon as a feat whose execution was only within the power of the Almighty; but to-day the inventor—that patient modern Job—has accomplished this seemingly impossible task, for at the end of this Nineteenth Century of the Christian Era, the telephone makes the lightning man’s vocal messenger, tireless, faithful, and true, knowing no prevarication, and swifter than the winged messenger of the gods.