Masters of Space / Morse and the Telegraph; Thompson and the Cable; Bell and the Telephone; Marconi and the Wireless Telegraph; Carty and the Wireless Telephone

by Walter Kellogg Towers

The switchboard at which they placed him had been good enough for the other boys who had been called upon to operate it, and indeed it represented the best thought and effort of the leaders in the telephone world. But it did not satisfy Carty, who, not content with simply-operating the board, studied its construction and began planning improvements. As Mr. Carty himself puts it:

The little switchboards of that day were a good deal like the automobiles of some years ago—one was likely to spend more time under the switchboard than, sitting at it! In that way I learned a great deal about the arrangement and construction of switchboards. Encountering the trouble first, I had an advantage over others in being able to suggest a remedy. So I have always thought it was a good thing to have troubles, as long as they are not too serious or too numerous. Troubles are certainly a great advantage, if we manage them correctly.

Certainly Carty made these switchboard troubles the first stepping-stone in his climb to the top in the field of telephone engineering. The improvements which the youngster suggested were so valuable that they were soon being made under his direction, and ere long he installed in the Boston exchange the first multiple switchboard, the fundamental features of which are in the switchboards of to-day. In his work with the switchboards young Carty early got in touch with Charles E. Scribner, another youngster who was doing notable work in this field. The young men became fast friends and worked much together. Scribner devoted himself almost exclusively to switchboards and came to be known as the father of the modern switchboard.

Boston had her peculiar problems and an "express" service was needed. How to handle this in the exchange was another problem, and this, too, Carty solved. For this purpose he designed and installed the first metallic circuit, multiple switchboard to go into service. The problems of the exchange were among the most serious of the many which troubled the early telephone companies. Of course every telephone-user desired to be able to converse with any other who had a telephone in his office or residence. The development of the switchboards had been comparatively slow in the past, and the service rendered by the boys proved far from satisfactory. The average boy proved himself too little amenable to discipline, too inclined to "sass" the telephone-users, and too careless. But the early use of "hello boys" was at least a success for the telephone in that it brought to its service John J. Carty. This boy pointed the way to the great improvements that made it possible to handle the constantly growing volume of calls expeditiously and effectively.

The early telephones were operated with a single wire grounded at either end, the earth return being used to complete the circuit as with the telegraph. But while the currents used to operate the telegraph are fairly strong and so can dominate the earth currents, the tiny currents which represented the vibrations of the human voice were all too often drowned by the earth currents which strayed on to the lines. Telephone engineers were not then agreed that this caused the difficulty; but they did know there was difficulty. Many weird noises played over the lines and as often as not the spoken word was twisted into the strangest gibberish and rendered unintelligible. If the telephone was to satisfy its patrons and prove of real service to the world, the difficulty had to be overcome. Some of the more progressive engineers insisted that a double-wire system without a ground was necessary. This, of course, involved tremendous expenses in rebuilding every line and duplicating every wire. The more conservative hesitated, but Carty forged ahead.

In 1880 he was engaged in operating a new line out of Boston. He was convinced that the double-wire system alone could be successful, and he arranged to operate a line on this plan. Taking two single lines, he instructed the operator at the other end to join them, forming a two-wire circuit. The results justified him. At last a line had been attained which could be depended upon to carry the conversation.

No sooner was one problem solved than another presented itself. What to do with the constantly increasing number of wires was a pressing difficulty. All telephone circuits had been strung overhead, and with the demand for telephones for office and residence rapidly increasing, the streets of the great cities were becoming a perfect forest of telephone poles, with the sky obscured by a maze of wires. Poles were constantly increased in height until a line was strung along Wall Street in New York City at a height of ninety feet. From the poles the wires overflowed to the housetops, increasing the difficulty of the engineers. How to protect the wires so that they could be placed underground was the problem.

We have noticed that Theodore Vail had been brought to the head of the Bell system in its infancy and had led the fight against the rival companies until it was thoroughly established. Now he was directing his genius and executive ability to so improving the telephone that it should serve every need of communication. While the engineers discussed theories Vail began actual tests. A trench five miles long was dug beside a railway track by the simple expedient of hitching a plow to a locomotive. In this trench were laid a number of wires, each with a different covering. The gutta-percha and the rubber coverings which had been used in cable construction predominated. It was found that these wires would carry the telephone currents, not as well as might be desired, but well enough to assure Vail that he was on the right track. The companies began to place their wires underground, and Vail saw to it that the experiments with coverings for telephone wires were continued. The result was the successful underground cables in use to-day.

At the same time Vail and his engineers were seeking to improve the wires themselves. Iron and steel wires had been used, but they proved unsatisfactory, as they rusted and were poor conductors. Copper was an excellent conductor, but the metal in the pure state is soft and no one then knew how to make a copper wire that would sustain its own weight. But Vail kept his men at the problem and the hard-drawn copper wire was at length evolved. This proved just what was needed for the telephone circuits. The copper wire was four times as expensive as the iron, but as it was four times as good Vail adopted it.

John Carty had rather more than kept pace with these improvements. He was but twenty-six years of age when Union N. Bethell, head of the New York company, picked Carty to take charge of the telephone engineering work in the metropolis. Bethell was Vail's chief executive officer, and under him Carty received an invaluable training in executive work. Carty's largest task was putting the wires underground, and here again he was a tremendous success. He found ways to make cables cheaper and better, and devised means of laying them at half the former cost. Having solved the most pressing problems in this field, his employers, who had come to recognize his marked genius, set him to work again on the switchboard. He was placed in charge of the switchboard department of the Western Electric Company, the concern which manufactures the apparatus for the telephone company. The switchboard, as we have seen, was Carty's first love, and again he pointed the way to great improvements. Most of the large switchboards of that time were installed under his direction, and they were better switchboards than had ever been known before.