File:The history of the telephone (1910) (14569746899).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:
un-tain pens. It is nothing less than the high-speedtool of civihzation, gearing up the whole mechan-ism to more effective social service. It is thesymbol of national efficiency and cooperation. All this the telephone is doing, at a total costto the nation of probably $200,000,000 a year —no more than American farmers earn in ten days.We pay the same price for it as we do for thepotatoes, or for one-third of the hay crop, or forone-eighth of the corn. Out of every nickelspent for electrical service, one cent goes to thetelephone. We could settle our telephone bill,and have several millions left over, if we cut offevery fourth glass of liquor and smoke of to-bacco. Whoever rents a typewriting machine,or uses a street car twice a day, or has his shoespolished once a day, may for the same expensehave a very good telephone service. Merely toshovel away the snow of a single storm in 1910cost the city government of New York as muchas it will pay for five or six years of telephoning. (238)
Text Appearing After Image:
A SLBWAV LAIU WliHOl I liUTlOM CO.NCRETK THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE This almost incredible cheapness of telephonyis still far from being generally perceived, mainlyfor psychological reasons. A telephone is notimpressive. It has no bulk. It is not like theSinger Building or the Lusitania. Its wires andswitchboards and batteries are scattered andhidden, and few have sufficient imagination topicture them in all their complexity. If only itwere possible to assemble the hundred or moretelephone buildings of New York in one vastplaza, and if the two thousand clerks and threethousand maintenance men and six thousandgirl operators were to march to work each morn-ing with bands and banners, then, perhaps, theremight be the necessary quality of impressivenessby which any large idea must always be impartedto the public mind. For lack of a seven and one-half cent coin,there is now five-cent telephony even in thelargest American cities. For five cents whoeverwishes has an entire wire-system at h

Note About Images