New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1915-02-17
East and West
Joined By Wire
TELEPHONE CONNECTION BE-
TWEEN ATLANTIC AND PA
CIFIC COAST CITIES.
STORY OF COMPLETION OF THE
SERVICE READS LIKE
ROMANCE.


phone was discovered, last Thursday
the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans were
united, telephonically speaking, when
Alexander Graham Bell who invented
the telephone in 1875, talked directly
to Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco.
Although John J. Carly chief engineer
of the Bell Telephone System, with
hundreds of engineers have worked
many years perfecting telephone equip
ment that would make the great feat
possible, the honor of sending the first
transcontinental message fell to the in
ventor Of the telephone, and thus it
was DR.. Bell and Mr.. Watson were at
either end of the line last Thursday.
In a little workshop in Boston, June
2, 1875, it was Alexander Graham Bell
who spoke and Thomas A. Watson who
heard the first message ever sent by
telephone. "Come here Watson, want
you'', were the first words ever conveyed
over a wire. That wire was only sixty
feet in length. The line used Thursday
is 340O miles long.
A bit. of sentiment that entered into
the celebration of the opening of the
transcontinental line was that the sixty
feet of wire used in the first talk in
Boston was spliced into the line Monday,
thirty feet Of it at New York and thirty
feet at San Francisco.
A dispatch from Philadelphia reports
the opening of the transcontinental line
as follows: Telephone communication
between Philadelphia and San Francisco
formally was inaugurated yesterday by
three taps on the Liberty bell, the sound
of which over the wire was the signal to
a bugler in the far western city to play
the "Star Spangled Banner" F..
"The strains of the national anthem
were clearly heard by 200 persons who
held receivers to their ears in this city.
MayorRolph in San Francisco,speak
ing to Mayor Blankenburg here, urged
that Philadelphia send the Liberty bell
to the Panama-P Pacific exposition and Mr..
Blankenburg promised to do all he could
to give the people of the country an op-
portunity to see the historic relic.
Prominent men of both cities talked
with one another, while Alexander Ora
ham Bell of Washington listened to the
conversation"
Ever since the telephone was dis
covered, America, the land of it's birth,
has kept the lead, using more telephones
than all the rest of the world. More
than twenty-one million miles of wire in
this country now unite nine-million
telephones in 10000 cities, towns and
villages. All the rest of the world has
less than five million telephones.
In 1876 the longest telephone line in
the world was from Boston to Cambridge,
two miles; in 1884 it was extended to
New York, 235 miles. Chicago and New
York were connected in 1895, and in 1911
New York could say Hello to Denver.
In the forty years since the telephone
was invented, nearly hundred types of
transmitters, and numerous repeating
instruments and other devices have been
used, and discarded for something better,
but it is asserted that no single new dis
covery has been responsible for this
latest and greatest achievement in the
telephone art. It was accomplished by
gradual improvements in all equipment,
by which mile by mile the distance of
possible telephone communication was
extended, each year a little further, until
the dream of transcontinenta commu-
nication has been realized.
In the two circuits Of the transcon-
tinental line there are approximately six
million pounds Of copper wire, or about
two hundred carloads. This wire is
stretched on 100000 poles, which if they
were loaded on railroad cars would make
twenty trains of thirty cars each.
The route of the transco ntinental tele-
phone line is from New York to Pitts
burgh, thence to Chicago, Davenport,
Des Moines and Omaha, Lincoln to
Denver. From Denver the line bends
north to avoid high attitudes, and then
runs directly westward to Salt Lake City
and to San Francisco.
Stationed along this great stretch Of
telephone line the day it was opened were
repairmen every few miles, in the big
centers, in the little towns, on the