The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-06-26
TO TALK 1000 MILES.
New York and Chicago to Be on
Speaking Terms Soon.
LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE.
Difficulties That Have Been Overcom-,
and Those That Still Stand in the
Way-Expensive Charges.


given to the world there were few who con-
sidered it anything but pretty scientific
toy. Even the handful of men who be-
lieved that there was great future before
it scarcely imagined in their fondest
dreams that within a few years it would
place cities many hundred miles apart on
speaking terms with each other, or that it
would enable the inhabitants of the can't
tails of different countries to talk together
as though in the same room. Yet the
Bell telephone is barely sixteen years old,
and the microphone transmitter is several
years younger, and during the past five or
six years Boston and Buffalo have been
talking with New York every day and
night in the week Paris talks with Brus
sells and London with Paris, and next year
New York will be able to listen to the
bands playing at the Worlds fair in Chi
cago.
Long distance telephony has reached it's
greatest development in America. The
American public eagerly avails itself of
every new method of doing business that
inventors and scientists can devise, and
telephone engineers have always found
that every step in advance that they could
make in extending the length of talking
wires has met with ready appreciation
from the business community. This is
one reason why the United States is well
in the lead in the matter of telephone
communication. In this country new
thing creates it's own demand, and finds
liberal patronage almost before the new
ness has worn off. Ia Europe people re-
quire to be convinced that an innovation
is really going to be useful and save
their time and money, before they will
use it freely. If the telephone has reached
its top notch of efficiency in America, it is
not alone because American electricians
and inventors excel those of other coun-
tries in their skill and foresight, but also
because the encouragement afforded bv
the eagerness of the public to adopt new
methods enables them 10 continually push
ahead and improve on the work of today
so as to produce something better tomor-
row.
Almost as soon as the local exchange
telephone business was fairly on its feet
'long distance schemes were preached.
and the air was full of plans for connect
ing different towns together by tel
ephone. In those early days Of
the telephone industry forty or
fifty miles was considered long
distance, and to talk with man over line
fifty miles long was one of the wonders of
the age. In experimenting with these
pioneer lines many curious things were
discovered. Fifty years ago, when the
electricians of all countries were striving
after system of telegraphy. all the lines
that were built were run with two wires
one to carry the outward going current
and the other to serve as 4 return to COM
plete the circuit back to the battery Then
Steinheil, German scientist, found that
the earth was an admirable substitute for
the return wire, and after that telegraph
circuits were run with one wire only, and
instruments and batteries were connected
to the earth, which is huge conductor OF
electricity that offers practically no resist
ance to the passage of the current. Con-
sequently the same practice was adopted
without question by the telephone men,
and they built all their circuits with single
wires, using the earth as return con-
ductor. That answered all very well for
short distances, but when lines of any con-
siderable length were tried with ground
return IL was found that it was impossible
to talk over them. The noises that got in
to the telephones drowned all attempts at
conversation, and long distance talking
over grounded circuits was pronounced a
failure
The earth itself was the cause of all the
trouble. To some electrical engineers the
earth is a great convenience to others it is
a source of continual difficulties. 1t is
magnificent conductor. and saves the tele-
graph engineer an immense amount in in
vestment in wires. But at the same time
tnr
of vagrant electrical currents, sort of
huge dynamo, as it were. LII long wire
is connected to the earth ut its two ends
currents will flow through the wire; gen.
orally these currents are very weak,
although sometimes they are strong
enough even to interfere with the work
ing of telegraph Instruments, opposing
and neutralizing the currents from
powerful batteries. Now the tele-
phone is an extraordinarily delicate
instrument. The current that is gener-
ated by speaking into an ordinary tele-
phone receiver is the weakest electrical
current capable of doing any useful work !;
conversely, a current SO weak that it will
produce no effect on any ordinary cleo
trical apparatus will affect a telephone
very sensibly. If all the telephone re-
ceiyers in use in the United States-and
there are over 100000 of them-were con-
nected up together and spoken into at
once they would not generate collectively
current of sufficient strength to light an
ordinary incandescent lamp. On the
other hand. if the current consumed
by all incandescent lamp were split
up into half million currents
OF enthusiastically small strength these
very feeble currents would pro
duce distinctly audible sound in
every one of the 500.oo telephones. With
this illustration of the extreme sensitive
ness of the telephone IN view, II is easy
to understand that the weak currents that
appear in lines connected 10 the earth
would produce powerful disturbances in
the telephones joined to those lines. An
other cause of disturbance Is induction.
Ii a wire carrying current be placed IN
proximity to another wire q current VIII
be produced IN the second wire by Undue
ton; every tiTae that the original current
stops or starts, reyerses or changes IN
strength. impulses will be caused In the
second wire. and if that wire be part OF a
telephone circuit disturbance VIII be pro-
duced in the telephone. II one
listens IN telephone once at
night with a telephone connected
10 a long grounded line at his ear, he Will
hear many strange sounds caused by the
earth currents and the currents that stray
into the wire by the mysterious pneho-
menOn of induction. lie VIII near no"
what seems like the wall of an infant,
then the ruStling of leaves. the plnlng OF
birds or the croaSing of frogs; suddenly
everything will be drowned 10y herce puZ-
zlng and rafting AS OF rushing tram
anu. later, this Will give way 10 nissIhs
sound of escaping steam, followed by 4
limo, l..sfi inc an