Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1911-12-16
TRIUMPH OF The TELEPHONE
Hard to Imagine How the World
Could Get Along Without II.
LINES BUSY ON ALL SIDES
All People Worth while on the
Wires-ImmensIty of Private
Lines and Their Con-
ncctfonn

a
hock Of birds has arrived and to direct
tie movements Of the dragon in wagner's
grand opera "Siegfried."
AZ the Vanderbilt cup race its wires
sirdled the track and reported every
gain or mshap OF the racing autos. And
at such extensive paseants that OF the
Quebec tereentenary in 1867 where 1000
actors came and went upon ten-acre
stage, every order was given to tele-
phoue.
Garfield was the first among American
presidents to possess telephone. An
exhibition instrument was placed in his
house without cost In 1878, while he
was still member of congress. Neither
Cleveland nor Harrison, for tempera-
mental reasons, used the magic wire
very often. In their time there was
one lonely Idle telephone in the White
House used by the servants several times
c week.
but with Mckinley came a new order
Of things. To him a telephone was more
teGu a necessity. 1t was pastme-an
eASiLirstng sport. lie was the one pres-
dssit who really revealed in the comforts
cI telephony.
IN 1896 10 had sat in his Canton home
arj hcard the cheers of the Chicago CON
Nent!on. Later nc sat there and ran the
&irst presidential telephone campaign
talked TO his managers in thirty-eight
states.
Roosevelt used the instrument mainly
in emergencies, but with Taft it has be-
come the common medium of converse
ton. lie introduced the custom of
long distance talk with his family every
evening when he is away from home,
Instead of the solitary telephone of the
Cleveland and Harrison days the White
House has now a branch exchange of its
own with wires running to every room.
bankers Slow 20 Come In.
Next to public officials, bankers were
perhaps the last to accept the facilities
of the telephone. They were slow to
abandon the old fallacy that ne business
can be done without a written record.
James Stillman Of New York was first
among bankers to foresee the telephone
era As early at 1875, while Bell was
teaching his infant telephone to talk,
StillInan risked 5000 in scheme to es-
tablish q crude dial system of wire com
:uunlcation, which later grew into New
York's first telephone exchange
At the present time the banker who
works closest to his telephone is probably
, George w. Perkins. The Perkins plan
OF rapid transit telephony is to prepare
list of names. from ten to thirty. and
10 flash from one another as fast as the
operator can ring them up.
Wall street brokers transact prac-
tically all their business by telephone
In the Stock exchange are GAL booths,
each one the terminus of a private wire.
A firm Of htnl-
years talking to send $1,000 messages,
and there is one firm which last year
sent twice as many. In the mansion
that the late J1. II. Hartman built at
Arden there were 100 telephones, with
sixty of them linked to the long distance
lines. What the brush is to the artist,
what the chisel is to the sculptor, the
telephone was to Hartman. He built his
fortune with it. 1t was in his library
his bathroom. his private car, his camp
in the oregon wilderness. No transact
ton was too large or too involved to be
settled over it's wires. lie saved the
credit of the Erie by telephone-lent It
100000 as he lay at home on sick bed.
He is a slave to the telephone" wrote
a magazine editor. Nonsense" replied
Hartman; ut is a slave to me-"
Long Distance Talks.
The long distance talks especially have
grown to be indispensable to the corpora
tIons whose plants are scattered and
geographically misplaced-to the mills OF
New England, for instance, that use the
cotton OF the south and sell so much OF
their product to the middle west. To the
companies that sell perishable commodl-
ties an instantaneous Conversation with a
buyer in distant city has often saved a
carload or a cargo.
Such caterers as the meat packers have
greatly accelerated the wheels of their
business by intercity conversations. For
ten years or longer one of these firms has
\ talked every business morning between
Omaha and Boston via 1,57O miles of wire
In the refining of oil the Standard OIL
company alone, at its New York office
sends 10000 messages a year In the
making 81 steel chemical analysis is
made Of each caldron of molten pig iron
when it starts on its way to be refined
and this analysis is sent by telephone Il
the steehpaker, so that he will know ex-
actly how each potful is to be handled.
In the floating OF logs down rivers, in
stead of having relays of shouters to pre-.
vent the logs from jamming there is now
wire along the bank, with a telephone
II
the rearing of skyscrapers 1t is now usual
10 have a temporary wire strung VERT.
cally, so that the architect may stand on
the ground and confer with a foreman
who sits astride OF a naked girder 3OC
feet up In the air.
The first steamship line to use the tele.
phone wac the Clyde, which had a wire
from tho dock 20 tho office in 1877, anC
the first railway was the Pennsylvania
which two years later was persuaded By
Prof. Bel himself to give It trial in Al
toona. Since then this railroad has be
come the chief beneficiary OF the art o.
telephony. 1t has i75 exchanges, 40
operators, 1900 telephones and 2O,OOO miles
OF wire-a more ample system than tn,
city of New YORK had In 1895.
In TIE operation Of trains the railroad:
have ,wGi.ed thirty years before they
dared TO trust tile telephone Just as they
waited fifteen years before they dared
60 trls. tie telegraph. In 1883 a few rail
ways u1cd the telephone IT. u small way
nut IN 1907 when & law was passed tina
made tcleg: aphers highly expensive Their,
vas "a general swing TO the telephone.
n.