File:Bell telephone magazine (1922) (14732132016).jpg

Identifier: belltelephonemag00vol2930amerrich (find matches)
Title: Bell telephone magazine
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: American Telephone and Telegraph Company American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Information Dept
Subjects: Telephone
Publisher: (New York, American Telephone and Telegraph Co., etc.)
Contributing Library: Prelinger Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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rst Bell custom-ers. They were rented in pairs, tobe used on private lines, and by Oc-tober 1877, about two thousand werein service. Viewed in perspective, the storyof American telephone service fromthen on is amazing. We in the business can say this inall modesty, for we are not takingcredit for the amazing factor inthat story—the public attitude whichchanged so swiftly from amused in-dulgence of a novel gadget to stead-ily increasing demand for service. The telephone is a means of com-munication. Other means may In-used for the same purpose. How isit that America made such wide useof this means while the rest of theworld did not? Our statisticians recently calcu-lated that if telephones in the UnitedStates bore the same relation to popu-lation as in the eight foreign nationswith greatest telephone development,we should now have less than ten mil-lion telephones in this country. In-stead of which, we have more than35,000,000 Bell and eight million In- Bell Telephone Magazine SPRING
Text Appearing After Image:
Operators Then and Now:—The cumbersome headset at the right was used for a short while in i8j8. The operator at the left was photographed about /poo. Todays operator, center, wears the Bell Laboratories latest development in headsets dependent telephones in the UnitedStates—43,000,000 altogether—andthis, after starting from a figurativeone in 1876, with less than a yearsheadstart over these other nations.Why the disparity? National Temper and Income DEMOCRACY is one explanation:our telephone service is a result offree enterprise in a free land. Sucha service could only have grownwhere freedom encouraged such aman as Bell to indulge his vision ofsome day talking by telegraph, andwhere other men of vision and sci-ence, year after year, were encour-aged to contribute the inventions andimprovements that added to thereach of the human voice until it be-came possible to carry on a conversa-tion across the continent or evenaround the world as easily as acrossthe street. These considera

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