Masters of Space by Walter Kellogg Towers
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Walter Kellogg Towers >> Masters of Space
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There remained the problem of devising some means by which a number of
automatic units could be operated over the same line at the same
time. This is not by any means a new proposition. Here again various
solutions have been offered by the scientists both of Europe and of
this country, and different systems designed to accomplish the desired
object have been placed in operation. One of the most recent, and
we believe the most efficient so far developed, is the so-called
multiplex printer system, devised by the engineers of the Western
Union Telegraph Company and now being extensively used by that
company. Perhaps the best picture of what is accomplished by this
system can be given by an illustration. Let us assume a single wire
between New York and Chicago. At the New York end there are connected
with this wire four combined perforators and transmitters, and four
receiving machines operating on the typewriter principle. At the
Chicago end the wire is connected with a like number of sending and
receiving machines. All these machines are in simultaneous operation;
that is to say, four messages are being sent from New York to Chicago,
and four messages are being sent from Chicago to New York, all at the
same time and over a single wire, and the entire process is automatic.
The method by which eight messages can be sent over a single wire at
the same time without interfering with one another cannot readily
be described in simple terms. It may give some comprehension of the
underlying principle to say that the heart of the mechanism is in
two disks at each end of the line, which are divided into groups of
segments insulated from each other, each group being connected to one
of the sending or receiving machines, respectively. A rotating contact
brush connected to the line wire passes over the disk, so that, as it
comes into contact with each segment, the line wire is connected in
turn with the channel leading to the corresponding operating unit. The
brushes revolve in absolute unison of time and position. To use the
same illustration as before, the brush on the Chicago disk and the
brush on the New York disk not only move at exactly the same speed,
but at any given moment the two brushes are in exactly the same
position with regard to the respective group of segments of both
disks. If we now conceive of these brushes passing over the successive
segments of the disks at a very great rate of speed, it may be
understood that the effect is that the electrical impulses are
distributed, each receiving machine receiving only those produced by
the corresponding sending machine at the other end. In other words,
each of the sets of receiving and sending apparatus really gets the
use of the line for a fraction of the time during each revolution
of the brushes of the distributer or disk mechanism. The multiplex
automatic circuits are being extended all over the country and are
proving extremely valuable in handling the constantly growing volume
of telegraph traffic.
What has thus been achieved in developing the technical side of
telegraph operation must be attributed in part to that impulse toward
improvement which is constantly at work everywhere and is the most
potent factor in the progress of all industries, but in large
measure it is the reflex of the growing--and recently very rapidly
growing--demands which are made upon the telegraph service. Emphasis
is placed on the larger ratio of growth in this demand in recent years
because it is peculiarly symptomatic of a noticeably wider realization
of the advantages which the telegraph offers as an effective medium
for business and social correspondence than has heretofore been in
evidence. It means that we have graduated from that state of mind
which saw in the telegraph something to be resorted to only under
the stress of emergency, which caused many good people to associate
a telegram with trouble and bad news and sudden calamity. There are
still some dear old ladies who, on receipt of a telegram, make a rapid
mental survey of the entire roster of their near and distant relatives
and wonder whose death or illness the message may announce before they
open the fateful envelope, only to find that up-to-date Cousin Mary,
who has learned that the telegraph is as readily used as the mail and
many times more rapid and efficient, wants to know whether they can
come out for the week-end. When Cousin Mary of to-day wants to know,
she wants to know right away--not only that she has her arrangements
to make, but also because she just does not propose to wait a day or
two to get a simple answer to a simple question.
Therein she embodies the spirit of the times. Our ancestors were
content to jog along for days in a stuffy stage-coach; we complain
that the train which accomplishes the same distance in a few hours is
too slow. We act more quickly; we think more quickly. We have to if we
want to keep within earshot of the band.
This speeding up makes itself quite obviously most apparent in our
business processes. No body of business men need be told how much
keener competition is becoming daily, how much narrower the margin by
which success must be won. Familiar phrases, these. But behind them
lies a wealth of tragedy. How many have fallen by the way? It is
estimated that something less than ten per cent. of those who engage
in business on their own account succeed. How terrible the percentage
of those who fail! The race has become too swift for them. Driven
by the lash of competition, business must perforce move faster and
faster. Time is becoming ever more precious. Negotiations must be
rapidly conducted, decisions arrived at quickly, transactions closed
on the moment. What wonder that all this makes for a vastly increased
use of the quickest method of communication?
That is but one of the conditions which accounts for the growing use
of the telegraph. Another is to be found in the recognition of the
convenience of the night letter and day letter. This has brought
about a considerable increase in the volume of family and social
correspondence by telegraph, which will grow to very much greater
proportions as experience demonstrates its value. In business life the
night letter and day letter have likewise established a distinct place
for themselves. Here also the present development of this traffic can
be regarded as only rudimentary in comparison with the possibilities
of its future development, indications of which are already apparent.
It has been discovered that the telegram, on account of its peculiar
attention-compelling quality, is an effective medium not only for
the individual appeal, but for placing business propositions before
a number of people at once, the night letters and day letters being
particularly adapted to this purpose by reason of the greater scope of
expression which they offer.
Again, business men are developing the habit of using the telegram
in keeping in touch with their field forces and their salesmen and
encouraging their activities, in cultivating closer contact with their
customers, in placing their orders, in replenishing their stocks,
and in any number of other ways calculated to further the profitable
conduct of their enterprises.
All this means that the telegraph is increasingly being utilized as a
means of correspondence of every conceivable sort. It means also that
with the growing appreciation of its adaptability to the every-day
needs of social and business communication a very much larger public
demand upon it must be anticipated, and it is to meet this demand with
prompt and satisfactory service that the telegraph company has
been bending its efforts to the perfection of a highly developed
organization and of operating appliances of the most modern and
efficient type.
APPENDIX B
Through the courtesy of J.J. Carty, Esq., Chief Engineer of the
American Telephone and Telegraph Company, there follows the clean-cut
survey of the evolution of the telephone presented in his address
before the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, May 17, 1916, when he
received the gold medal of the Institute.
More than any other, the telephone art is a product of American
institutions and reflects the genius of our people. The story of its
wonderful development is a story of our own country. It is a story
exclusively of American enterprise and American progress, for,
although the most powerful governments of Europe have devoted their
energies to the development and operation of telephone systems, great
contributions to the art have not been made by any of them. With very
few exceptions, the best that is used in telephony everywhere in the
world to-day has been contributed by workers here in America.
It is of peculiar interest to recall the fact that the first words
ever transmitted by the electric telephone were spoken in a building
at Boston, not far from where Benjamin Franklin first saw the light.
The telephone, as well as Franklin, was born at Boston, and, like
Franklin, its first journey into the world brought it to Philadelphia,
where it was exhibited by its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, at
the Centennial Exhibition in 1876, held here to commemorate the first
hundred years of our existence as a free and independent nation.
It was a fitting contribution to American progress, representing the
highest product of American inventive genius, and a worthy continuance
of the labors of Franklin, one of the founders of the science of
electricity as well as of the Republic.
Nothing could appeal more to the genius of Franklin than the
telephone, for not only have his countrymen built upon it an
electrical system of communication of transcendent magnitude and
usefulness, but they have made it into a powerful agency for the
advancement of civilization, eliminating barriers to speech, binding
together our people into one nation, and now reaching out to the
uttermost limits of the earth, with the grand aim of some day bringing
together the people of all the nations of the earth into one common
brotherhood.
On the tenth day of March, 1876, the telephone art was born, when,
over a wire extending between two rooms on the top floor of a building
in Boston, Alexander Graham Bell spoke to his associate, Thomas A.
Watson, saying: "Mr. Watson, please come here. I want you." These
words, then heard by Mr. Watson in the instrument at his ear,
constitute the first sentence ever received by the electric telephone.
The instrument into which Doctor Bell spoke was a crude apparatus, and
the current which it generated was so feeble that, although the line
was about a hundred feet in length, the voice heard in the receiver
was so faint as to be audible only to such a trained and sensitive ear
as that of the young Mr. Watson, and then only when all surrounding
noises were excluded.
Following the instructions given by Doctor Bell, Mr. Watson with his
own hands had constructed the first telephone instruments and ran the
first telephone wire. At that time all the knowledge of the telephone
art was possessed exclusively by those two men. There was no
experience to guide and no tradition to follow. The founders of the
telephone, with remarkable foresight, recognized that success depended
upon the highest scientific knowledge and technical skill, and at once
organized an experimental and research department. They also sought
the aid of university professors eminent for their scientific
attainments, although at that time there was no university giving the
degree of Electrical Engineer or teaching electrical engineering.
From this small beginning there has been developed the present
engineering, experimental and research department which is under my
charge. From only two men in 1876 this staff has, in 1915, grown
to more than six hundred engineers and scientists, including former
professors, post-graduate students, and scientific investigators,
graduates of nearly a hundred American colleges and universities, thus
emphasizing in a special way the American character of the art. The
above number includes only those devoted to experimental and research
work and engineering development and standardization, and does
not include the very much larger body of engineers engaged in
manufacturing and in practical field work throughout the United
States. Not even the largest and most powerful government telephone
and telegraph administration of Europe has a staff to be compared with
this. It is in our great universities that anything like it is to
be found, but even here we find that it exceeds in number the entire
teaching staff of even our largest technical institutions.
A good idea may spring up in the mind of man anywhere, but as applied
to such a complex entity as a telephone system, the countless parts of
which cover a continent, no individual unaided can bring the idea to
a successful conclusion. A comprehensive and effective engineering and
scientific and development organization such as this is necessary, and
years of expensive work are required before the idea can be rendered
useful to the public.
But, vital as they are to its success, the, telephone art requires
more than engineers and scientists. So we find that in the building
and operation and maintenance of that vast continental telephone
system which bears the name of Bell, in honor of the great inventor,
there are at work each day more than 170,000 employees, of which
nearly 20,000 are engaged in the manufacture of telephones,
switchboards, cables, and all of the thousands and tens of thousands
of parts required for the operation of the telephone system of
America.
The remaining 150,000 are distributed throughout all of the States
of the Union. About 80,000 of these are women, largely telephone
operators; 50,000 are linemen, installers, cable splicers, and the
like, engaged in the building and maintaining of the continental
plant. There are thousands of other employees in the accounting,
legal, commercial and other departments. There are 2,100 engineers
located in different parts of the country. The majority of these
engineers have received technical training in American technical
schools, colleges, and universities. This number does not include
by any means all of those in the other departments who have received
technical or college training.
In view of the technical and scientific nature of the telephone art,
an unusually high-grade personnel is required in all departments, and
the amount of unskilled labor employed is relatively very small.
No other art calls forth in a higher degree those qualities of
initiative, judgment, skill, enterprise, and high character which have
in all times distinguished the great achievements of America.
In 1876 the telephone plant of the whole world could be carried away
in the arms of one man. It consisted of two crude telephones like the
one now before you, connected together by a wire of about one hundred
feet in length. A piece cut from this wire by Mr. Watson himself is
here in this little glass case.
At this time there was no practical telephone transmitter, no
hard-drawn copper wire, no transposed and balanced metallic circuits,
no multiple telephone switchboard, or telephone switchboard of any
kind, no telephone cable that would work satisfactorily; in fact,
there were none of the multitude of parts which now constitute the
telephone system.
The first practical telephone line was a copy of the best telegraph
line of the day. A line wire was strung on the poles and housetops,
using the ground for the return circuit. Electrical disturbances,
coming from no one knows where, were picked up by this line.
Frequently the disturbances were so loud in the telephone as to
destroy conversation. When a second telephone line was strung
alongside the first, even though perfectly insulated, another surprise
awaited the telephone pioneers. Conversation carried on over one of
these wires could plainly be heard on the other. Another strange
thing was discovered. Iron wire was not so good a conductor for the
telephone current as it was for the telegraph current. The talking
distance, therefore, was limited by the imperfect carrying power of
the conductor and by the confusing effect of all sorts of disturbing
currents from the atmosphere and from neighboring telephone and
telegraph wires.
These and a multitude of other difficulties, constituting problems of
the most intricate nature, impeded the progress of the telephone
art, but American engineers, by persistent study, incessant
experimentation, and the expenditure of immense sums of money, have
overcome these difficulties. They have created a new art, inventing,
developing, and perfecting, making improvements great and small in
telephone, transmitter, line, cable, switchboard, and every other
piece of apparatus and plant required for the transmission of speech.
As the result of nearly forty years of this unceasing, organized
effort, on the 25th of January, 1915, there was dedicated to the
service of the American public a transcontinental telephone line,
3,600 miles long, joining the Atlantic and the Pacific, and carrying
the human voice instantly and distinctly between San Francisco and New
York and Philadelphia and Boston. On that day over this line Doctor
Bell again talked to Mr. Watson, who was now 3,400 miles away. It was
a day of romantic triumph for these two men and for their associates
and their thousands of successors who have built up the great American
telephone art.
The 11th of February following was another day of triumph for the
telephone art as a product of American institutions, for, in the
presence of dignitaries of the city and State here at Philadelphia and
at San Francisco, the sound of the Liberty Bell, which had not been
heard since it tolled for the death of Chief-Justice Marshall,
was transmitted by telephone over the transcontinental line to San
Francisco, where it was plainly heard by all those there assembled.
Immediately after this the stirring tones of the "Star-spangled
Banner" played on the bugle at San Francisco were sent like lightning
back across the continent to salute the old bell in Philadelphia.
It had often been pointed out that the words of the tenth verse of the
twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, added when the bell was recast in
1753, were peculiarly applicable to the part played by the old bell in
1776. But the words were still more prophetic. The old bell had been
silent for nearly eighty years, and it was thought forever, but by the
use of the telephone a gentle tap, which could be heard through the
air only a few feet away, was enough to transmit the tones of the
historic relic all the way across the continent from the Atlantic to
the Pacific. Thus, by the aid of the telephone art, the Liberty Bell
was enabled literally to fulfil its destiny and "Proclaim liberty
throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof."
The two telephone instruments of 1876 had become many millions by
1916, and the first telephone line, a hundred feet long, had grown to
one of more than three thousand miles in length. This line is but part
of the American telephone system of twenty-one million miles of
wire, connecting more than nine million telephone stations located
everywhere throughout the United States, and giving telephone service
to one hundred million people. Universal telephone service throughout
the length and breadth of our land, that grand objective of Theodore
N. Vail, has been attained.
While Alexander Graham Bell was the first to transmit the tones of
the human voice over a wire by electricity, he was also the first to
transmit the tones of the human voice by the wireless telephone,
for in 1880 he spoke along a beam of light to a point a considerable
distance away. While the method then used is different from that now
in vogue, the medium employed for the transmission is the same--the
ether, that mysterious, invisible, imponderable wave-conductor which
permeates all creation.
While many great advances in the wireless art were made by Marconi and
many other scientists in America and elsewhere, it remained for that
distinguished group of American scientists and engineers working under
my charge to be the first to transmit the tones of the human voice in
the form of intelligible speech across the Atlantic Ocean. This great
event and those immediately preceding it are so fresh in the public
mind that I will make but a brief reference to them here.
On April 4, 1915, we were successful in transmitting speech without
the use of wires from our radio station at Montauk Point on Long
Island to Wilmington, Delaware.
On May 18th we talked by radio telephone from our station on Long
Island to St. Simon Island in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of
Georgia.
On the 27th of August, with our apparatus installed by permission of
the Navy Department at the Arlington, Virginia, radio station, speech
was successfully transmitted from that station to the Navy wireless
station equipped with our receiving apparatus at the Isthmus of
Panama.
On September 29th, speech was successfully transmitted by wire from
New York City to the radio station at Arlington, Virginia, and thence
by wireless telephone across the continent to the radio station at
Mare Island Navy-yard, California, where I heard and understood the
words of Mr. Theodore N. Vail speaking to me from the telephone on his
desk at New York.
On the next morning at about one o'clock, Washington time, we
established wireless telephone communication between Arlington,
Virginia, and Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands, where an engineer
of our staff, together with United States naval officers, distinctly
heard words spoken into the telephone at Arlington, Virginia. On
October 22d, from the Arlington tower in Virginia, we successfully
transmitted speech across the Atlantic Ocean to the Eiffel Tower at
Paris, where two of our engineers, in company with French military
officers, heard and understood the words spoken at Arlington.
On the same day when speech was being transmitted by the apparatus at
Arlington to our engineers and to the French military officers at the
Eiffel Tower in Paris, our telephone engineer at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,
together with an officer of the United States Navy, heard the words
spoken from Arlington to Paris and recognized the voice of the
speaker.
As a result of exhaustive researches, too extensive to describe here,
it has been ascertained that the function of the wireless telephone
is not to do away with the use of wires, but rather to be employed
in situations where wires are not available or practicable, such as
between ship and ship, and ship and shore, and across large bodies of
water. The ether is a universal conductor for wireless telephone
and telegraph impulses and must be used in common by all who wish to
employ those agencies of communication. In the case of the wireless
telegraph the number of messages which may be sent simultaneously is
much restricted. In the case of the wireless telephone, owing to the
thousands of separate wave-lengths required for the transmission of
speech, the number of telephone conversations which may be carried on
at the same time is still further restricted and is so small that
all who can employ wires will find it necessary to do so, leaving the
ether available for those who have no other means of communication.
This quality of the ether which thus restricts its use is really
a characteristic of the greatest value to mankind, for it forms a
universal party line, so to speak, connecting together all creation,
so that anybody anywhere, who connects with it in the proper manner,
may be heard by every one else so connected. Thus, a sinking ship or a
human being anywhere can send forth a cry for help which may be heard
and answered.
No one can tell how far away are the limits of the telephone art, I
am certain that they are not to be found here upon the earth, for
I firmly believe in the fulfilment of that prophetic aspiration
expressed by Theodore N. Vail at a great gathering in Washington, that
some day we will build up a world telephone system, making necessary
to all peoples the use of a common language or a common understanding
of languages which will join all of the people of the earth into one
brotherhood. I believe that the time will come when the historic bell
which now rests in Independence Hall will again be sounded, and
that by means of the telephone art, which to-day has received such
distinguished recognition at your hands, it will proclaim liberty
once more, but this time throughout the whole world unto all the
inhabitants thereof. And, when this world is ready for the message, I
believe the telephone art will provide the means for transmitting to
all mankind a great voice saying, "Peace on earth, good will toward
men."
INDEX
A
Ampere's telegraph, 42.
Anglo-American Telegraph Co., 134.
Ardois signal system, 30.
Atlantic cable projected, 109;
attempted, 117, 121, 123, 133;
completed, 124, 136.
Audion amplifier, 256.
Automatic telegraphy, 53, 105, 266.
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