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N the fall of 1876, Gardiner Greene Hubbard began to systematically exploit the electric-speaking telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell. In the vicinity of Boston a number of private telephone lines were strung, some of which were two or three miles in length, to connect mills and offices or offices and residences. In some instances, where private telegraph lines already existed, the telegraph instruments were replaced with a pair of telephones.

On October 9, 1876, a telephone was attached to each end of a telegraph circuit owned and operated by "The Walworth Manufacturing Company, extending from their office in Boston to their factory in Cambridge, a distance of about two miles. The company's telegraph battery consisting of nine Daniell's cells, were removed from the circuit, and another of ten carbon elements was substituted." It is recorded that "articulate transmission then took place through the wire. The sounds, at first faint and indistinct, became suddentlysuddenly [sic] quite loud and intelligible." Another instance of the early practical use of the telephone was in connecting the water works with the central office of the water commissioners, of Cambridge, Mass. On April 4, 1877, a telephone circuit was strung to connect the factory of Charles Williams, Jr., in Court Street, Boston, with his residence in Somerville. This is said to be the first telephone circuit constructed in the United States, the earlier ones being transformed telegraph lines. A number of other private telephone lines were built in and about Boston early in 1877. In fact a number of small contractors found it profitable to string private lines, and strove to secure orders for this class of work. For they would run the circuits on the poles of the telegraph companies without permission, or bracket them to house-tops, to trees, to any place that a bracket or a porcelain knob could be attached, paying no attention to property rights.

In the winter of 1876-77, experimental toll service over telegraph circuits was successful for distances of several hundred miles, even from Boston to New York. In November, 1876, Graham Bell found no difficulty in carrying on conversation over telegraph circuits between New York and Boston, using only a pair of box magneto-telephones, so long as the parallel wires were not in service. "When this