The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-06-22
THIRTY YEARS OF
ELECTRIC TALK
Marvellous Growth in Use of
Invention Less Than Gen.
GRAFTON Old.
AMERICA FAR IN THE LEAD
ONE PHONE TO EVERY EIGHT
ZEN PERSONS IN COUNTRY.

DelEke
mat in its commercial use il has only
Just reached the thirty-year mark. Yet
this is the fact To which President Vail
or the American Telephone & TeIe-
graph company calls attention in the
annual report of his company which
mas Just been issued. There probably
never has been another case i'm the
history of the world in which an in
Nehtlon reYolutionizins in so many
ways the existing methods of doing
business has been brought into prac-
ideally universal use within such a
brlef period of time. Derided in the
beginning as an interesting scientific
toy which never would be of any
practical use, the telephone has
reached a point today where il is an
essential adjunct of every business Of
nee, and il is rapidly coming to be
considered equally important alike 10
the farmer and the city resident. Ii
mas given rise TO the greatest public
utility corporation in the world. as
well as 10 hundreds of smaller con-
Germs. gives employment directly and
indirectly 10 hundreds of thousands of
persons and yields a volume of bust
ness amounting TO more than two
hundred million dollars a year.
Development in United States.
1t is noteworthy that the most rapid
progress of the telephone has been in
the United States This may be due
partly TO the fact that Alexander Ora
ham Bell, its inventor was a citizen
of this country. y more important in
fiuence has been that with his we'll
known propensity for hustling and
time saving, the American grasped the
possibilities of the instrument more
quickly than the slower going business
men of other lands. There are staid
and conservative Englishmen. even at
the present day. who refuse TO discuss
business matters over the wire. An
American who adopted this attitude
would be regarded as a dead one
and would not be likely to survive long
in the struggle for business. To pre-
sent the difference between American
and foreign telephone habits statistic
ally, the number of telephones in Great
Britain is one 10 116 persons: in Ger
many one TO ll3; in France one TO 30l;
in Russia one 10 2,02S. and In Sweden
the most fully developed of the Eu-
rOpean countries, one 10 fOT,y-SiX For
all of Europe the average is one tele-
phone TO 263 persons. In the United
States there is a telephone 10 every
twenty-five OF the population. and this
takes no account of the thousands of
persons making use of the sO-called
independent lines or small cooperative
lines throughout the country, which
would raise the proportion probably To
one 10 eighteen.
As these figures show the most ad-
~'vanced country in Europe, telephone
ally, occupies about the same position
as the United States did in 1905 which
is a long way behind as progress in
this country goes. Great Britain and
Germany are where America was in
1900. France is about twenty years be
hind this country, while Russia still
: is in the dark ages of telephone COM
munication represented in the United
States by the figures for its very be-
ginning I'm 1873.
The swift growth in the use of the
telephone in the United States is
shown by statistics of the Bell sys-
TEN, the only one for which complete
figures are available. These show that
in 1873 there We're less than 10000 tele-
phones comprising what is now the
greatest system in the world II was
not until 1854 that the hundred thou
sand mark was passed, and not until
1890 was the second hundred thousand
added. BY 1898 there were something
over 400, 900 subscribers stations in the
whole system
An Amazing Growth.
The ten years that have passed since
that time have seen such an astonsh-
ing growth of the telephone business
that mere figures convey very little
idea of il. Al the beginning of 1901
the number had reached $4,000. and
= in that year the million mark was
passed. For the next three years the
forward progress was at the rate of
ABOUT 800. 600 a year, and brought the
total for 1905 up 10 2.000. 600. During
1905 more than half million new tel
ephones were brought into use. and i'm
the following year the 100000 mile
HaFH hafn hsar orr
in the entire history of telephony,
however, was 1907, the number of new
stations added during that twelve
month being 56S,340, making a total of
1899, 600, or only "A little less than
4 900 600 telephones i'm use in the United
States in this one system alone. There
are nine times as many Americans
using telephones now as ten years ago,
and twenty-five times as many as in
1883.
There was one Bell telephone to
every twenty-five persons i'm the cOun-
try on Jan. 1, 1908; one TO every l13 in
1900: one 10 every 235 I'm 1890, and only
one TO about 500 in 1880. Taking into
account the lines not included in these
statistics il is probably safe TO say
that there is one telephone to every
eighteen or nineteen persons in the
country As several persons OTdinari-
" use one instrument at least one
men, women and children, use the tel
ephone 10 a greater or less extent.
What this use amounts To is shown by
the fact that there are upwards of 49,
coo. 900 telephone calls a day, or a total
of almost 5000, coo, 600 year. over the
lines of the one leading system. This
Is nearly equal 10 seVenty-fiVe talks
for every inhabitant Of the United
States.
Use in the Country.
One might think with this tremen-
dous progress of telephone facilities
that the limit of its use had almost
been reached. This is not the view of
the best informed telephone authori-
ties. who point out that the extension
in the employment of the telephone
and the adaptation of the instrument
10 new uses is likely TO be even great
err i'm the future than in the past. One
field in which a very rapid growth is