The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-02-14
HOW THE TELEPHONE GREW.

Interesting illustrated Ialk Before
 Mems League of Waterbury Church.
 The telephone has got to be so com" mon a thing, familiar to everybody, that few stop to think these days of the wonder and mystery of it. A group of men had their recollection stirred and their imagination reused in lecture before the Mems League of
 the First Church. Waterbury, Feb. 11th on the development of the telephone
 and the system now organized for its
 use,
 The lecture was delivered by How ard w. Embler of New Haven and he
 was assisted by H. I. Spalding of the
 same city who, Illustrated the letcure
 with a series of excellent stereopticon pictures,
 The lecture began with the primary
 scientific discoveries and their applica- tion in practical use, and built up from
 this the system of enormous extent and
 complexity as it now exists. To illus trate the method, it may be said that
 a series of pictures were given, showing
 line of telephone wires as 1t extended from some remote country district to
 some crowded central station. At first there appeared on the poles only sin gle line of wire sufficient for all the
 needs of the scanty neighborhood. Pret-
 ty soon another wire would join it and 1 +bo +u,o uyn,,1d rt,,, aIopor cida INv cidn until third came in, and then fourth and finally dozens, scores and hundreds. | joined together in cables and these cables twisted into great coils, not in l this later form on poles, but in under ground conduits and from thence emerged into the basement rooms of the great central stations. The large cables contained wires whose number
 we should not dare to guess at but great enough. as may be supposed, to supply the needs of a large urban pop ulation. There were pictures also H. lustrating the inner workings of the | telephone exchange The details of the way the connections are made there
 were clearly explained and so far as possible illustrated with pictures, Then | there were pictures showing the amount of labor and expense involved in the maintenance of a great telephone sys tenn in busy districts, with the men at
 work in the trenches or on the poles, | There was also a series of extremely
 beautiful pictures showing the destruc- | tive effects of that most dreaded enemy of telephone worl1ers-the Ice storm. It was no doubt a surprise to some
 to know that from 1881 to say 1894 or | 1885 there was very little increase in the
 use of the telephone There was a slight up and down movement during
 these years dependent on various caus- es effecting the cost of construction, the
 advance of invention and the use of
 improvements, but from the latter year l 1905 up to now, the increase has been 1 by leaps and runs This was shown on chart where the comparative business of different years was pietorially ex- l hibited There were innumerable other points in the lecture and in the pictufes which cannot be given in brief review l like this It was very informing as we'll as entertaining hour and there will ! be desire for repetition of the lee ture somewhere or other in the city
 probably before the lecture season is over
 l After the lecture there was a social
 hour in which the members of the
 Mems League partook of refreshments
 and talked over the lecture and became
 better acquainted with each other and
 with the new members who joined dur
 ing the evening. IL was very sue
 cesful beginning for the new church or garization.