New Britain herald., 1916-02-24
New Britain Has $520
 Char Wifh E1n Francisco
Over 250 People in This City Enjoy Demonstration of Trans Continental Telephone Service Which Would
 Cost $7 Per Minute at Regular Rates

flashed through the United States the
 message that the much discussed con- l tinental telephone which had been the dreams of the pioneers of tele- l phone service had been completed ana
 on that date the first conversation be- tween New York and San Francisco
 on the new line transpired. The | speakers were Alexander Bell, the 1 "Father of the Telephone" and ] Thomas Watson, who forty years be- fore, had been his able lieutenant in 1 mastering the intracacies that con- l fronted them when they set out on 1 what appeared to be battle without an end, the perfectIng of a system | whereby human voices could be trans l posed from street to street, and city 1 to city. 1 AS in other place throughout the 1 country, residents Of this city were in- ! terested in the wonderful invention and fond hopes have been entertained since the first message was sent flying across the continent that local people would have an opportunity of witness ing a demonstration of the phone. It remained for Manager William A. Semple, assisted by the Chamber of Commerce, to bring bout the boon and in Booths hall last evening, over 240 persons listened with the keenest interest while the speakers in San
 Francisco talked with people in this
 city. It was a wonderful affair and at the close many remarks such as, 'Wouldn't have missed it for a thou sand dollars and similar words of ap- preciation were heard through the 1 corridors and during the luncheon served by the chamber.
 It was shortly after 8 o'clock when President Christ of the Chamber of Commerce opened the evenings en- tertainment He introduced R. w. Hicks of New York, special agent for , the American Telephone and Tele- graph, who explained how the com pany built the line from New York to the Pacific coast. The talk was il- lustrated with views commencing with picture of the first telephone in Boston nearly forty years ago.
 History of Telephone.
 MT. Hicks said in part:
 Less than forty years ago, Alexan : der Graham Bell, standing in a little attic at Exeter Place, Boston, sent | through a crude telephone, his own 1 invention, the first spoken words ever carried over wire, and the words were heard and understood by his as- sociate, Thomas A. Watson, who was at the receiver in an adjacent room. On that day, March 10th, 1876, the telephon was born, and the first mes sage went over the only telephone line i in the wofld-a line less than a hun | dred feet long. The world moves a ! long way ahead in the span of one mans life. On Monday afternoon, ] January 18th, 1915, this same Alex ander Graham Bell, sitting in the of fees of the American Telephone and Telegraph company, at New York, talked to this same Thomas A. Wat son in San Francisco, over wire stretching 3,400 r iles across the continent and part of a system that includes 9,ooo,ooo telephone, con- nected by 21,oOO,O00 miles of wire.
 Talking the Real Problem.
 Ut was perhaps a little more difficult to string wires from Den yer to San Francisco than from New Britain t, 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 a breath as the motive power. In effect, the coyage of the voice across the continent is Instantaneous; if it's speed could be accurately measured a fifteenth of a second would probably be nearly exact If it were possible for sound to carry that far, a 'hello' uttered in New Britain and travelling through the air without the aid of wires and electricity, would not reach San Francisco until four hours later. The teleph one not only transmits speech but it tra nsmits it thousands of times faster than it's own natural speed.
 But while the telephone is break ing speed records, it must also guar antee safe delivery to these millions of little passages it carries every few minutes in the way of sound waves created at the rate of 2,100 a second
 The engineer in telephony cannot increase his motive power. A breath against metal disk changes air waves into electrical currents and those elec- tricy currents. millions of which are required for 8 single conversation, must be carried across the continent and produce the same sounds in San Francisco as were made in New Britt ain. His is the task so fine as to be gigantic. In his History of the Tele- phone, Herbert N Casson says that
 the energy set free by cooling one spoonful of water just one degree,
 would operate a telephone for 10000 years. It was to nurse and coax this
 baby current of electricity 3,0oo miles across the continent under river and
 over mountains, through the blistering
 neat ot the alkali pla1ns and the cold
 or the snow-caDped peaks, that has