Hopkinsville Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1889-1918, 1915-02-04
Remarkable Achievement in
Scientific World Is Put
in Operation.
A WONDER OF The AGES.
Man Standing on Atlantic
Coast Can Hear COnverSa-
ton on Pacific Side.


attic at 5 Exeter Place. Boston, sent
through crude telephone, his own
invention, the first spoken words ev-
er 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 10, 1876,
the telephone was born, and the
first message went over the only
telephone line in the world-a line
less than a hundred feet long. The
world moves long way ahead in
the span of one mans life. On Mon.
day afternoon, January %, this
same Alexander Graham Bell, sitting
in the offices of the American Tele-
phone & Telegraph company at New
York, talked to this same Thomas A.
Watson in San Francisco, overa wire
stretching 3,400 miles across the con-
tinent and part of a system that in
cludes 100000 telephones, connect.
ed by 81, 900, 900 miles of wires.
In that same memorable year of
1876 Dom Pedro de Alcantara, EN-
peror of Brazil, visiting the first tel
ephone exhibition at our first great
national show, the Philadelphia CEN
tennial, picked up the receiver, lis
tened as Professor Bell talked at the
other end of the room, and, amazed
at the wonder of the thing, cried
out: my God, it speaks" Had
Dom Pedro lived to see the Pan
American exposition he could have
heard Professor Bell talking to him,
not merely from the other end of a
room, but from the other side of a
continent.
The Pan-American exposition it.
self, planned to celebrate the COM
pletion of the Panama canal and the
joining of the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans, will mark still closer wed.
ding of the east and west. When its
gates are thrown open on February
| 20, San Francisco will not only be
nearer to New York through short
ening of its water ways, but will be
in constant and instantaneous touch
with it through the medium of
speech. It is curious fact, too,
that this second great feat of engi.
neering, this other canal, this even
more intimate connection between
the two seaboards has been COM
pleted in the same year. Quietly,
almost unnoticed, but steadily 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 to.
ward the Golden Gate. Their work
has been less spectacular, it has ex-
cited little attention, but these men
have met obstacles as hard to over
come as the Culebra slide. and they
have conquered them. The long,
dreamed.of transcontinental line is
no longer a dream. New York can
talk to San Francisco.
ADATE TO REMEMBER.
Monday, January %, 1915, has
taken its place among the momen-
tous dates in the annals of science
and human progress. On that day,
in the presence of groups of promi-
nent men on either coast, the trans
continental telephone wires were
given their first public test, and the
completion of the line was formally
celebrated. Distinguished men in
the offices of the Pacific Telephone
and Telegraph company in San Fran
cisco conversed freely with distin-
guished men on the Atlantic sea.
board, and one more great chapter
in the history of telephony was fin
ished as Bell. sitting in the offices of
the American Telephone and Tele-
graph company in New York, talked
to Watson across continent.