Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1915-02-05
Talking From Atlantic To Pacific.

Graham Bell, standing in little attic at
No. S Exeter Place. Boston, sent through
a crude telephone, his own invention, the
first spoken words ever carried over a wire,
and the words were heard and understood
by his associate, Thomas A. Watson, who
was at the receiver in an adjacent room.
On that day. March 10th. 1875, the tele-
phone was born. and the first message
went over the only telephone line in the
world-a line less than hundred feet long.
The world moves long way ahead in the
span of one mans life. On Monday after
noon, January 25th, this same Alexander
Bell. sitting in the Offices of the American
Telephone & Telegraph Company, at New
York, talked to this same Thomas A. Wat
son in San Francisco, over wire stretch
ing 3,400 miles across the continent and
part Of a system that includes 100000
telephones, connected by 21,000,000 miles
Of wires.
The Pan-American Exposition itself,
planned to celebrate the completion of the
Panama Canal and the joining of the At
lantic and Pacific Oceans, will mark still
closer welding of the East and West. When
its gates are thrown open on February
goth. San Francisco will not only be nearer
to New York through a shortening of its
water ways, but will be in constant and
instantaneous touch with it through the
medium of speech. 1t is a curious fact,
too, that this second great feat of engineer
ing, this other canal, this even more init
mate connection between the two sea-
boards, has been completed in the same
year. Quietly, almost unnoticed, but stead
lily and bravely, while the gigantic steam
shovels were cutting their way through
the earth in the South. the engineers of
sound and electricity were weaving their
magic webs through the air and pushing
on towards the Golden Gate. Their work
has been less spectacular. it has excited
little attention, but these men have met
obstacles as hard to overcome as the Guile
bra slide, and they have conquered them
The long-dreamed-of Transcontinental Line
is no longer dream. New York can talk
to San Francisco.
1t was, perhaps, little more difficult to
string wires from Denver to San Francisco
than from New York to Denver, but the
actual construction of the line was the
least of the engineers troubles. His real
problem was to make the line talk" to
send something 5000 miles with breath
as the motive power. In effect, the voyage
of the voice across the continent is instan-
taneous; if its speed could be accurately
measured. fifteenth of a second would
probably be nearly exact. In other words,
a message flying across the continent on
the new Transcontinental Line travels.
not at the rate of 1,l60 feet per second,
which is the old stage coach speed of sound
but at $4,000 miles per second. If it were
possible for sound to carry that far, a
Hello" uttered in New York and travelling
through the air without the aid of wires
and electricity, would not reach San Fran
cisco until four hours later. The telephone
not only transmits speech, but transmits
it thousands Of times faster than its own
natural speed.
But while the telephone is breaking speed
records, it must also guarantee safe delv-
cry to these millions of little passengers it
carries every few minutes in the way of
sound waves created at the rate of 2,l00
second. There must be no jostling or
crowding. These tiny waves, thousands
and thousands Of varying shapes, which
are made by the human voice. and each
as irregular and as different from the other
as the waves of the sea, must not tumble
over each other or get into each others
way, but must break upon the Pacific coast
just as they started at the Atlantic, or all
the line fails and the millions of dollars
spent on it have been thrown away. And
in all this line, If just one pin-pOint of con-
struction is not as it should be, if there is
one iota of imperfection. the miles of line
dtC uoCiCoos anu NiAC NuiACuto anu WAVES
and sounds and words do not reach the
end as they should. 1t is such tremen-
dous trifes. not the climbing of mountains
and bridging of chasms, that make the
Transcontinental Line one of the wonders
of the age.
The engineer in telephony cannot in
htcW ftNgaWa
a metal disk changes air valves into cleo
trical currents and these electrical currents,
millions of which are required for single
conversation, must be carried across the
continent and produce the same sound
waves in San Francisco as were made in
New York. Here is a task so fine as to be
gigantic. In his History Of the Telephone"
Herbert N. Casson says that the energy set
free by cooling one spoonful of water just
one degree, would operate a telephone for
ten thousand years. II was to nurse and
coax this baby current of electricity three
thousand miles across the continent, under
rivers and over mountains, through the bis
terine heat of the alkali plains and the
cold Of snow-capped peaks, that has taken
the time and though; and labor of the
brightest minds of the scientific world.
In spite, however. of the fact that, CON-
pared with the electrical problem, the mere
engineering task Of constructing the line
may appear simple to the scientist. no one
can run his finger over the route of the
new line on the map without being i'm
pressed with the magnitude of the under
taking. The data and figures are tremen-
dous The line crosses thirteen States, il
is carried on 100000 poles. Four hard
drawn copper wires. .l65 inch in diameter,
run side by side over the entire distance
establishing two physical and one phantom
circuit. One mile Of single wire weighs
ass pounds. the weight of the wires in the
entire line being 100000 pounds or
1880 tons. This. Of course. is the trans
mission wires alone. In addition to these,
each physical circuit uses some $4,000