The Birth and Babyhood of the Telephone

Name: The Birth and Babyhood of the Telephone
Author: Watson, Thomas Augustus

Watson, Thomas Augustus

Telephone -- History

Number of Telephones[2]       8,133,759     11,909,571     15,187,296     13,573,025     15,761,095
 Number of Central                 5,767          6,147          6,639          6,896          6,975
   Offices
 Miles of Pole Lines             362,481        394,529        428,212        407,454        399,368
 Miles of Wire:
    In Underground Cable      14,207,000     27,769,000     45,116,000     47,639,000     50,783,000
    In Aerial Cable            6,945,000     12,835,000     23,777,000     26,425,000     28,072,000
    Open Wire                  3,711,000      4,339,000      5,231,000      4,562,000      4,590,000
 Total                        24,863,000     44,943,000     74,124,000     78,626,000     83,445,000
 Per Cent Total Wire                85.1           90.3           92.9           94.2           94.5
   Mileage in Cable
 Average Daily Telephone
   Conversations:[3]
    Exchange                  31,818,000     48,051,000     61,150,000     58,066,000     67,400,000
    Toll and Long              1,307,000      2,090,000      2,884,000      2,224,000      2,497,000
   Distance
 Total                        33,125,000     50,141,000     64,034,000     60,290,000     69,897,000
 Total Plant              $1,373,802,000 $2,566,809,000 $4,028,836,000 $4,187,790,000 $4,489,078,000
 Number of Employees[4]          228,943        292,902        318,119        241,169        257,443
 Number of A.T.&T. Co.           139,448        362,179        567,694        657,465        646,882
   Stockholders


                               Footnotes


[1]“Ahoy!” was the first telephone shout, and was used during the
    experiments, but “hello!” superseded it when the telephone got into
    practical use.

[2]Excludes private line telephones numbering 79,612 on December 31,
    1938. Including telephones of about 6,500 connecting companies and
    more than 25,000 connecting rural lines, the total number of
    telephones in the United States which can be interconnected is
    approximately 19,885,000.

[3]For year ending December 31.

[4]The employees of the Western Electric Company, Inc., and the Bell
    Telephone Laboratories, Inc., numbering 34,910 on December 31, 1938,
    are not included.


                         PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
                                 1-1-40

    [Illustration: 109 Court Street, Boston, Where Bell Discovered the
    Principle of the Speaking Telephone]




                          Transcriber’s Notes


—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
  is public-domain in the country of publication.

—Silently corrected a few palpable typos.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
  _underscores_.







End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Birth and Babyhood of the Telephone, by 
Thomas A. Watson

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The Birth and Babyhood of the Telephone

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