Denver labor bulletin., 1915-02-06
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
Inventor of the Bell Telephone, who
RevolutioniTed Business


Watson. who was at the receiver in an
adjacent room. On that day, March 10,
1876. the telephone was horn and the
first message went over the only tele-
phone 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 Monday afternoon. jan
uary 25. this same Alexander Graham
Bell sitting in the offices OF thesAmer-
lean Telephone and Telegraph Company
at New York talked to this same Thom-
a. A Watson in San Francisco over a
wire stretching 3.400 miles across the
continent and part of system that in
cludes 9.OO0.O0 telephones. connected by
2l 100000 miles OF wires
Monday, January p, 1915, has taken
its place among the momentous dates IN
the annals of science and human prog
res. On that day. in the presence of
groups Of prominent men on either coast,
the transeontinental telephone wires
were given their first public test and the
completion of the line was formally eel
ebrated. Distinguished men in the Of
fices OF the Pacific Telephone and Tele-
graph Company in San Francisco con-
versed freely with distinguished men on
the Atlantic seaboard, and one more
great chapter in the history of telephony
was finished as Bell, sitting in the Of
ficcs of the American Telephone and
Telegraph Company in New York. talked
to Watson across the continent
Time Plays q Freak
With proper appreciation Of the i'm
portance of the event everyone present
was allowed to talk to San Francisco.
Many apparently trivial questions ira
vcrsed the continent over the new con-
tinental line. II seemed the most nat
ural thing in the world to say: "How's
the weather over thcrcf" or -What time
is its- The difference in time was i'm
pressiyely shown by the answer: ~0h,
It's ] o'clock here or sone-ten.r when
the man on the New York end looked
at his watch and found il was o'clock
OF fourteen. as the case might be- As
one man expressed it; The Bell people
hav. annihiiated time"
II was at 4 O'Clock. New York time,
I O'Clock San Francisco time. that Chief
Engineer Carty Of the American Telc
phone and Telegraph Company, acting
chairman of the meeting. seated him.
self at the flat-top desk and placing the
receiver TO his ear called for the num-
Der which would put New York and San
Francisco in telephone connection with
each other.
There was a hush of expectancy. for
the moment was a crucial one. Iarticu-
larry to the telephone engineers, who
had laborcd 30 long to bring this great
achievement to successful completion.
Would the line work all right, No
one could tell. No one knew so we'll
as they the sensitive nature OF the elec-
tric impulse that carries the human
voice in less than one-fifth of second
across the continent. To be sure the
line had been tested out and had worked
splcndidly. But no one could tell but
that. away out in the Rockies. an avail
anchc might hurtle down the mountains
and bury a pole line out of sight, or
cyclonic wind sweeping across the desert
play havoc with the tiny strands which
guide the electric waves from coast to
coast
But Mr.. Carty's first words were re-
assuring. Everybody smiled and the
telephone mon brcathed sigh of relief
Everything was working perfectly Mr..
Carty was talking to san Francisco.
Progress of rhirty-nine Years
Thirty-ninc years before this same
DIR. Bell had stood in his attic chamber
in Boston and had uttered te first in
tclligiblc sentence ever spoken by the
telephone over 90 feet of wire strung