File:The history of the telephone (1910) (14569713300).jpg

Identifier: cu31924007427424 (find matches)
Title: The history of the telephone
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Casson, Herbert Newton, 1869-
Subjects: Telephone
Publisher: Chicago, A.C. McClurg & Co.
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
arched the South for papertwine and found it. He bought a barrel of itfrom a small factory in Richmond, but after atrial it proved to be too flimsy. If such papercould be put on flat, he reasoned, it would bestronger. Just then he heard of an erraticgenius who had an invention for winding papertape on wire for the use of milliners. Paper-wound bonnet-wire I Who could im-agine any connection between this and the tele-phone? Yet this hint was exactly what Barrettneeded. He experimented until he had deviseda machine that crumpled the paper around thewire, instead of winding it tightly. This was thefinishing touch. For a time these paper-woundcables were soaked in oil, but in 1890 EngineerF. A. Pickernell dared to trust to the tightnessof the lead sheathing, and laid a dry corecable, the first of the modern type, in one ofthe streets of Philadelphia. This cable was theevent of the year. It was not only cheaper. Itwas the best-talking cable that had ever beenharnessed to a telephone. (132)
Text Appearing After Image:
BRdADWAV AND .lOUX STHERT, NEW VORK. AS IT APPEARSWITHOUT OVERHEAD \VHiES THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE What Barrett had done was soon made clear.By wrapping the wire with loose paper, he hadin reality cushioned it with air, which is the bestpossible insulator. Not the paper, but the airin the paper, had improved the cable. More airwas added by the omission of the oil. And pres-ently Barrett perceived that he had merely re-produced in a cable, as far as possible, theconditions of the overhead wires, which are sep-arated by nothing but air. By 1896 there were two hundred thousandmiles of wire snugly wrapped in paper and lyingin leaden caskets beneath the streets of the cities;and to-day there are six million miles of it ownedby the affiliated Bell companies. Instead ofblackening the streets, the wire nerves of thetelephone are now out of sight xinder the road-way, and twining into the basements of buildingsHke a new sort of metallic ivy. Some cables areso large that a single spool of ca

Note About Images