Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-09-15
This Is Parkway Chatting.

I
merely by joining bunch of isolated
| plants.
This Is Parkway Chatting.
BY the hardest sort of work-the sort of
work that is done from the neck up-tele-
phone experts have made It possible to
talk, under advantageous conditions, over
| about 1900 miles Of wire. This is just 100
| times the distance over which the first Bell
| company said that its patrons could talk
! successfully, the prospectus of the original
| company placing the limit of efficient serv-
| ice at twenty miles. When this is put away
| in the mind, together with the fact that
telephone development had It's beginning
! about twenty-five years ago. the idea Of
| coast-to-coast communication in the not
| too-far-away future doesn't seem SO wild
| and WooZy after all.
| But the long distance folks don't catch
| all the trouble by a long shot. for while
| they're straning every nerve to solve the
| problem of transmission over lines of great
length, the local service companies are
| busy every minute building up and keeping
In shape their organization of employees so
| that the exactlons of public which de-
| mands instantaneous uninterrupted
service may be met in every particular.
Some Possible Kinks.
And it is really wonderful the way the
perfected machine OF animate and inanimate
parts responds to all demands upon II.
| When two stations in a city are in connec-
ton the wires joining them pass through
| overhead and underground cables in and
| out or buildings. and the Lord only knows
| where else. Often 1t takes a number of
| operators to connect up the different sec
| tons going to make up the complete line
between the two stations that are hooked
UP for q chat
Taking it for granted that the telephone
operators in the various exchanges properly
perform their functions-and really the pub
lie has mighty few kicks coming against
the operators-the main problem with which
the local company has to contend is how
to maintain perfect conditions on the wires
There's the kernel of this nut right there.
To do this the company must provide many
different classes of highly skilled mechanics
and electricians. In the central office test
men of technical training and practical ex-
perience Sit around, ready to jump at any
trouble that may turn up. They have a
sensitive, shivery apparatus, by means of
which they are able to locate to within a
couple Of feet or so the troublesome condi-
tions interfering with the telephone users
conversation.
If the kink happens to be in the switch
board wiring, switchboard trouble men,
are ready on a moments notice to straight
en- things out If the trouble is on the
aerial line a lineman is ready, with gloves
on his hand and hooks on his feet, to do a
| little garden and fancy climbing. If the
| trouble is in the underground or up-in-the-
| air cable, splicers must be ready to rip
| open the wire bundle. or II necessary re-
| move an entire section of the cable.
There's Hard Work in This.
The nimble-fingered. clear-headed splicer
| must select from the 200 wires confined in
| a space Of three inches in diameter the
proper wires to re-establish the conditions
| and connections in the same manner as be-
| fore they were disturbed. Sounds almost
impossible, doesn't It?
Or 1t may be found that the trouble Is at
| the subscribers station, which is, by the
powers. more complicated collection Of
| apparatus than Is generally realized. A
| bell adjustment may be necessary or q
| transmitter may have become defective
| Whatever the trouble a force Of station in
| spectors must correct 1t with the greatest
| dispatch.
| What results have been attained by the
| work Of the various forces mentioned are
not generally realized by the public and may
best be expressed by the statement that for
every case of actual trouble which devel-
ops while telephone users want to talk APP
proximatey 400 messages are successfully
| handled-and that's going some.
Weak Current Works Hard.
There are many excellent reasons why
long distance telephony is impracticable
beyond certain limits. but most of them are
decidedly muddling to the layman. One
thing however. is plain as a pikestaff
| IT'S just this: The main difficulty is not one
Of construction, for telephone engineers
| have met and overcome the most desperate
difficulties of mountain and wilderness, but
! rather one of maintaining the carrying
power of the telephone current Astonish-
ingly few people realize how slight Is the
current that operates the telephone one or
| the greatest Of the many Indispensable con-
triVances depending upon electrical energy
Sufficient of this energy to carry speech
| over 1900 miles of wire constitutes only an
| infintesimal fraction of that necessary to
! operate sixteen candlepower incandescent
| light and the amount of electrical energy
| required to lift thirteen ounces one foot
| from the ground would operate an ordinary
| telephone for 100000 years. And that's
| some time
Every telephone message that flies over
/ the wires has a rough road, full of obsta-
| cles, over which to travel Every switch
| board through which the lines pass in
| creases the resistance encountered by the
| delicate currents and shortens the limit
of transmission. And 1t must be remem-
| bered, moreover. that the electrical energy
| supplied to a telephone cannot be tempo
| rariy increased, as in the case of the tele-
| graph, for the purpose Of overcoming trou-
| bles which often are due to trivial causes
| In the case of aerial lines few broken in
| sulators or local storm somewhere in the
| path of the message may seriously impair
Transmission. or, as is often the case, actu-
ally interrupt 1t.
Wire Chatters Don't Think.
But how many telephone users think of
these things. Suppose a Washington bust
ness man puts in a Cumberland call and
| finally gets his party at the other end Of
| the line. And suppose, just after he's said
| "Hello! and settles down to discuss an i'm
portant matter in particularly hasty jig