Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/148

142 the cities in the United States, and interconnect the same with toll lines, would necessarily involve much delay in building, and compel many communities to wait several years before receiving telephone service.

Third. The absence on the part of capitalists of faith in the intrinsic value of this incomparable invention precluded the possibility of financing any large telephone exchange system embracing the principal cities in one state only, to say nothing of a proposition of such magnitude as to include the leading cities throughout the country.

Fourth. Local interest supported by local investments was absolutely essential to insure even the small growth that was then considered satisfactory.

How great this lack of faith was, and how often Alexander Graham Bell, Gardiner Greene Hubbard and Thomas Sanders and their early associates met with rebuffs when inviting capital to join with them in promoting the establishment of telephone exchanges in 1877, and how widely capitalists were misled into believing that the telephone had 'no commercial value,' by the very men who should have been the first to grasp the possibilities in so revolutionizing an invention, may be shown in two quotations.

In November, 1876, after Sir William Thomson's glowing description of the successful telephone experiments at the Centennial had aroused the interest of scientists everywhere, a prominent electrician, who later claimed to have invented the telephone, wrote to his attorney on November 1, 1877:

As to Bell's talking telegraph, it only creates interest in scientific circles, and as a scientific toy it is beautiful, but of no commercial value. We can already do more with a wire in a given time than by talking, so its commercial value will be limited.

And the editor of Engineering, of London, then the leading engineering publication of the world, in calling attention to 'the extreme simplicity of receiver and transmitter,' stated in the issue of December 12, 1876, that the instruments were

so simple indeed that were it not for the high authority of Sir William Thomson, one might be pardoned at entertaining some doubts of their capability of producing such marvelous results.

Only those familiar with the situation can realize how great and how unreasoning was this lack of faith on the part, not only of capital, but of scientists, mechanicians, merchants. But here is an excerpt from an editorial written at the close of 1883, by a journalist thoroughly conversant with the telephone situation from the beginning:

The issuance of Bell's patent, on March 7, 1876, attracted little or no attention in the telegraphic world. The inventor was practically unknown in electrical circles, and his invention was looked upon, if indeed any notice at all was taken of it as utterly valueless. In fact, we believe that not a single person could have been found, however well versed in telegraphy or electricity, who would have given a hundred dollars for the patent within three months after its issue