The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1893-01-19
POSSIBILITIES OF TELEPHoNlNe.

POSSIBILITIES OF TELEPHONlNG.
Proposed Lines Across the Continent and
Under the Ocean.
Especial Correspondence
NEW YORK, Jan. 12.-"When are you
going to talk to San Francisco?' is a
question that has been asked of tele-
phone experts in dozen cities great
many times since the opening Of the
longest telephone line in the world-that
from New York to Chicago
The question was asked by man in
Chicago the other day, and the answer
was that, although nobody could tell
when the thing would come about, it was
doubtless future possibility An ex-
pert in New York said, eff the managers
of the Long Distance Telephone COM
pany should ask this Office for estimates
on line to San Francisco l haven't a
doubt that the estimates would be forth
coming"
The truth is that the science of cleo
tricity and the art of telephoning have
reached degree of development that
makes possible all sorts of calculations
touching things that once went by guess.
Before the line from New York to Chi
cago was built the telephone managers
felt reasonably certain that it would
work satisfactorily, though they called
it an experimental line. The men who
do the figuring had come to the belief
that 1-inch hard drawn copper wire,
weighing 435 pounds to the mile, would
enable New York and Chicago to talk
with each other Experiments made by
joining several shorter circuits till the
distance equaled the $50 miles between
the two cities seemed to prove that the
smaller wire used in these shorter Cir
cults would not do for the proposed long
one and confirmed the reports of the
men who had been figuring on the prob
lem in the office.
When the time comes for talk across
the continent, from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, like calculations and like ex-
periments will determine the necessities
of the case. 1t has been demonstrated
that telephoning is possible over line
$50 miles in length, and that being the
case the long distance system, which,
now does not extend farther south than
Washington or farther north than Buff
falo and Portland, may be extended to
far southern cities and up into Canada.
By the time this has been done part of
the distance between Chicago and San
Francisco will have been bridged, and it
will be possible to hitch together five or
six of these long circuits, and thus to OBJ
tain for experiment a line as long as the
distance between New York and San
Francisco
Scientific electricians have formula
for calculating the utmost possibilities Of
talk by telephone with hard drawn cop
per wire as the medium. The thing to-
do is to get the highest tensile strength
with the least electrical resistance. Ii
the wire now in use could be greatly re-
duced in diameter without correspond
ing reduction in tensile strength, the inn
mediate possibilities of telephoning
would be enormously widened.
The experts own that there is an error
somewhere in the formula by which
they determine the possible limits of
telephoning, and they are hard at it try
ing to find the error and to get rid of it,
Meanwhile if somebody will find bet
ter medium than hard drawn copper
wire another great stride will be posi-
BILE. The experts say. however, that no
such medium is likely to be discovered
Telephoning across the Atlantic is
theoretical possibility, and nobody
knows how soon it may become an ac-
complished fact. No syllable has ever
passed between the two continents by
way of the existing cables, but a clever
expert has suggested method Of getting
at least one note through, and another
man has taken out a patent on the process.
The immediate difficulty of telephon
ing by the present Atlantic cables lies In
the fact that they work too slowly To
transmit the note G to the human ear by
the existing Atlantic cables it would be
necessary to send back and forth 256
vibrations in second But the cables
cannot come anywhere near such feat.
The patented process of sending an
American musical G to Great Britain
involves the use Of the photograph.
The scheme is to sound the note into
set the monograph going very slowly, so
that the vibrations of the note, which
would be inaudible to human ears, shall
be communicated to the cable, transmit
ted under the ocean and received on an
other slowly revolving monograph be-
yond the ocean. The record made, the
monograph could be set a-going at a
rapid rate of speed, and the note would
be ground out with sufficiently rapid vi
brations to be audible to British ears.
The process would be very slow one,
however, and as all the mechanical APP
planes would have to be very nicely
adjusted and at great expense the ex-
pertinent has not yet been tried.
1t may be tried one of these days, how
ever, and the more sanguine electrical
experts prophesy telephoning between
Europe and America. Nobody, how
ever, is going to lay an enormously ex-
pensive cable just for fun or even in the
interest of eIactrica1 science and in the