Los Angeles herald., 1906-10-07
MANY THINGS
IN A TELEPHONE
MATERIALS GATHERED FROM
ALL OVER GLOBE
Where the Instrument Installed Today
Actually Was Four Y ears Ago.
Sources of vuIcanite, Carbon,
Aluminium and Brass

A little Imagination, based on plain
fact, reveals a remarkable story of the
ransacking of four quarters of the
globe in order that every American
may talk with every other, however
distant. The separate parts of the
telephone that go to the subscriber to-
day were two or three years ago to be
found in widely scattered localities
under the earth in Montana, Michigan
and Pennsylvania; at the bottom of the
bogs in Sweden; in hot. miasmic
swamps in South America and Central
Africa; in beds of beauxite of north
east Georgia; in the spruce forests OF
the great northwest. The diverse ele-
ments finally come together in the
New York and Chicago factories of the
Western Electric company, the manu-
featuring auxiliary of the Bell COM
panies of the United States.
In the New York establishments
alone, after all the parts have been
assembled lightweight people give
their entire time to putting together
the finished pieces of the transmitters,
eighty-four people to the pieces of the
receivers, while eighty-six skilled artt-
sans dismantle Instruments that need
repair, often through the insertion of
some minute part which has worn out
before the rest of the apparatus. In
the total work of preparing these and
other portions of the familiar tele-
phone system, more than 10000 people
in the United States alone are en-
ployed, constituting the greatest single
electric company in the world-one
having at present on it's payroll, in
Guiding the establishment in foreign
countries, about 2S,s5O persons.
In the Receiver
Look for a moment at-the- materials
| of the receiver as 1t hangs on its hook.
The most apparent part of 1t consists
of three rubber moulded parts made
from vulcanite a material which re-
calls the story of the endeavors of
| Charles Goodyear to discover process
| of hardening the raw rubber which he
had been using for covering overshoes.
| Goodyear had learned that sulphur
powder could be used as drying agent
| and by accident one day some sulphur
| dried rubber falling from his hands
upon a red-hot stove hardened there
| instead of melting as he would have
| expected Forthwith the inventor had
| the long-sought-for clew, and speedily
patented the process of vulcanizing,
without which the telephone industry
might have been seriously hampered
| these many years.
Into the making of about 1000 of these
| receivers day, which are forwarded
to Bell subscribers in every nook and
Granny of the United States, q goodIy
quantity of vulcanite goes-as one
might learn by weighing the material
in the receiver and multiplying it by
say, 100000, the approximate number
of telephone stations in the system
! The previous history of the hard, dark
substance covering the delicate APP
paratus of given receiver would be
difficult to trace. Such is the subdi-
vision of production i'm modern indus
| try that the telephone manufacturer
| has no direct concern with the pro-
| cesses Of manufacture of vulcanite OF
the sources of the supply Of crude rub
ber. whether II comes from Congo
state. where the negro rubber gather
working among long cablelke vines
smears his body with sap, which dry
ing station In thin sheets; or whether
IL arrives here from the desolate
swamps Of the Amazon, haunted by the
silent Guaranls, or from the ague.
| breeding woodland of Central America
All that Is required OF the vulcanite
| which Is purchased from the largest
producer Of the material IN the United
states, Is that II shall conform to Ger.
tain exacting standards which engi
neering necessity has Imposed.
As OF the Magnet
The same truth applies 10 the othei
elements OF the receiver-as TO the per
manent magnet made OF specia
grade OF magnet steel, rolled In Penn
sylvania mills and bought for the New
York factory in 5O-ton lots with sur