Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/505

Rh : "Prof. Bell's Telephone. I am prepared to build and equip telephone lines at moderate rates. Telegraphic lines, with Morse or other instruments, built of the best material. Please call and examine our telephone lines in operation." In November, 1877, Dr. Crane, a dentist in Hartford, had a party-line on which were six physicians and six druggists, including Smith, and on November 15 Crane advertised: "Messages sent direct from my office to the following places by telephone." On January 24, 1878, the Courant announced that "When word came to Hartford of the accident on the Connecticut Western, information was dispatched to the central office from whence run wires to many physicians of this city. In a very short space of time and within a few minutes of each other, nearly a score of doctors and surgeons were at the depot."

As a rule, in the beginning the messages sent over these early telephone lines were not switched through, but received at one telephone by 'Central' and repeated to the subscriber through another telephone. For there was one telephone for each circuit terminating in the central office; if there were six subscriber-lines, then there were six hand telephones hanging on the wall of the central office. But this was not the case at Bridgeport, Ansonia, New Haven or Meriden.

In May, 1877, Mr. Edwin T. Holmes used Bell's hand telephone as an accessory to his central-office burglar-alarm system in Boston, one set of wires serving for both purposes. Five of these alarm wires were cut through a small brass telegraphic pin switchboard, enabling a hand telephone to be connected or plugged-in on any line. Mr. F. E. Kinsman, who was then in the employ of Mr. Holmes, said that (in August, 1877) the service was not given by connecting any two circuits together, but that "it was made by the operator taking the message and turning about and talking through the telephone to the party to whom the message was given." Three months later Mr. Holmes installed hand telephones in many of the wholesale and commission houses to enable these subscribers to the system to notify the Holmes central office to tell the express company to call for packages ready for shipment. Then a central switchboard system was installed and, in March, 1878, there were 256 hand telephones in use. The use of hand telephones only is said to have continued in this system for more than twelve years, although the number of subscribers finally exceeded 500.