Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/441

Rh Had the telephone been sold outright, in place of being leased for use in designated territory, it is very doubtful if a transcontinental system could have been established, or the full intercommunicating value of the telephone developed. For it is one of the few natural monopolies. Foreign telephone experts say that the American telephone system has no equal in scope and efficiency, which is a gratifying endorsement, in view of the fact that the foundations of this American transcontinental system were not laid by men long skilled in an established art, or men who wielded the power inherent in great financial resources, but by men who strove against the combined forces of complete absence of telephonic experience, practise and knowledge, of the destructive power of the elements, and of human greed that would publicly rob vested right and good name.

Had these pioneers comprehended all that was to be endured, the losses, the bitter competition, the costly litigation, how many would have had the courage to imperil funds and business reputation in so hazardous an undertaking? For never before did an industry progress so rapidly as is recorded of the art of telephony, none ever had to face such costly, peculiar and ever-expanding demands, and none was ever so bitterly and so unjustly assailed.

These pioneers soon found that one set of telephone equipment would scarcely be installed by a local company before it would have to be displaced by improved apparatus, if the field was to be held. Or an unexpected marvelous growth in the number of subscribers would compel complete rebuilding of lines and the installation of more improved apparatus. Came storms of wind and sleet wrecking miles of pole line; flashed the lightning, burning out every coil in the plant; came the newly-invented electric lights rendering the service useless after night-fall until circuits were rearranged; came the trolley, making metallic circuits a technically and a judicially determined necessity; all in the brief span of eight years. 'Nothing is constant but change,' was a sentiment readily subscribed to by pioneer telephone men.

Yet notwithstanding discouragements, disasters and hardships, of a character unknown before, the dream of yesterday is the realization of to-day. For now there are nearly three million telephones connected to this one transcontinental system, receiving service over a total wire mileage exceeding five million miles, while the actual cash investment in new construction alone expended by the companies forming this great system during the past five years only aggregates two hundred millions of dollars.

How came the first commercial telephone exchange to be devised? is a question often asked. The idea of a central exchange telephone system was one of Graham Bell's earliest conceptions in connection with the possible utilization of the telephone. Thus it came in the natural development of so useful a public-service function as telephone