At this juncture a young Bostonian named Francis Blake wrote to Vail, announcing that he had invented a transmitter that was the equal of Edison’s, and offering to sell it for stock in the company. The purchase was made, and the claim of the inventor proved true. The Bell telephone was again as good as that of the Western Union Company. A new company, called the National Bell Telephone Company, was organized, with a capital of $850,000, and Colonel Forbes of Boston became its first president. There have been few patent struggles to compare with that which was waged over the telephone. McCormick fought for years to uphold his rights to the invention of the reaper, but he fought a host of competitors, and the warfare was of the guerrilla order. The Bell Company fought alone against the Western Union, and it was a struggle of giants. The Western Union was certain that it could find patents antedating Bell’s, and it went on that assumption, even after its own expert had reported, “I am entirely unable to discover any apparatus or method anticipating the invention of Bell as a whole, and I conclude that his patent is valid.” It claimed that Gray was the original inventor, and instructed its lawyers to bring suits against the Bell Company for infringing on Gray’s patents. The legal battle began in the autumn of 1878, and continued for a year. Then George Gifford, the leading counsel for the Western Union, told his clients that their claim was baseless, and advised that they come to a settlement. The Western Union saw the wisdom of this course, and went to the Bell Company with an offer of compromise. An agreement was finally reached, to remain in force for seventeen years, and the terms were that the Western Union should admit that Bell was the original inventor, that his patents were valid, and should retire from the telephone business. On the other side, the Bell Company agreed to buy the Western Union telephone system, to pay them a royalty of twenty per cent. on all their telephone rentals, and to keep out of the telegraph business. That ended the great war. It converted a powerful rival into an ally, it gave the Bell Company fifty-six thousand new telephones in fifty-five cities, and it made that company the national system of the United States. In 1881 there was another reorganization; the American Bell Telephone Company was created, with a capital of six million dollars. The following year there was such a telephone boom that the Bell Company’s system was doubled, and the gross earnings reached more than a million dollars.