Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-04-29
THE CIRCUMSTANCE PHONE
First Used Between Boston and Lowell Twenty-Five Years
 Ago-Its Growth Since.

It is quarter of a century since the beginning of long-distance telephony Before 1879 no telephone message had been transmitted from one city to an other and the idea that the sound of the human voice could be carried over a wire 40 or 50 miles in length was not generally entertained, says an electrical exchange. It was, however, firmly fixed in the minds of the men who had recent ly formed the Bell company, and they even then predicted that the time would come when the country would be GOV cred by harmonious network of tele- phone wires, and the distance over which conversations could be carried would be measured by hundreds and thousands of miles, bringing the entire population in communication through single universal system.
 Three years after the invention of Alexander Graham Bell had been ex- hibited at the Centennial exposition at Philadelphia and had excited the cu- r1osity of the world rather as scientific novelty than a practical utility, these men in the New England company au- thorized the construction of line from Boston to Lowell, a distance of 27 miles When the wire had been strung it was found that they were right in their ex- pectattons, and the voice of a person speaking in Boston could be heard by the person at the receiver in Lowell.
 Even the public failed 70 grasp the significance of this achievement, and 1t was regarded largely as an expert ment until business transaction in volving several hundred thousand dol- lars was brought to a successful con- summation by conferences over the line between the two Massachusetts cities. Papers were drawn at Boston, agreed to by those present and then read to the parties in Lowell. Amendments were suggested and discussed, until the docu- ment was satisfactory to all the persons interested.
 The news of this transaction spread far and wide, and did much to awaken in the minds of business men realiza- tion of the commercial possibilities of the telephone, while it served to stimu- late the engineers and experts employed by the company in their endeavors to perfect the system. Although it was possible to use the Lowell line for busi- ness purposes, the apparatus was crude and imperfect in operation. But the beginning had been made on that career of progress in long-distance telephony which is one of the marvels of the mod ern industrial world.
 From the first it was evident that
 some better conductor must be found l than the iron wire then in use, and with 1 in six years from the date of the Lowell l experiment. a harddrawn copper wire
 had been made and tested in actual op-
 eration, and the ability to converse over l long distances, as the term is under stood to-day, has been the result of the use of this medium.
 l While the art of longxdistance tele- l phony has not yet reached a point where
 people on the Pacific coast may talk to l those on the Atlantic seaboard and the l news of towns on the great lakes be 1 transmitted by telephone to the cities
 on the gulf, nevertheless 50,000,000 o1 l the 90 900 ,000 people in the United States l are within reach of the telephone and l the close of the next quarter century l 50 years from the date of the opening of
 the 27-mile line between Boston and
 Lowell is likely to see telephone in
 every hamlet in the country, perhaps
 with power to transmit the sound of the
 human voice from one end of the land l to the other.