File:The history of the telephone (1910) (14756392435).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

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duringthe Civil War, then a telegraph operator inCleveland. In 1869 his salary v^as cut downfrom one hundred dollars a month to ninety dol-lars ; whereupon he walked out and founded theWestern Electric in a shabby little machine-shop.Later he moved to Chicago, took in Elisha Grayas his partner, and built up a trade in the makingof telegraphic materials. When the telephone was invented. Barton wasone of the sceptics. I well remember my dis-gust, he said, when some one told me it waspossible to send conversation along a wire.Several months later he saw a telephone and atonce became one of its apostles. By 1882 hisplant had become the official workshop of theBell Companies. It was the headquarters ofinvention and manufacturing. Here was gath-ered a notable group of young men, brilliant andadventurous, who dared to stake their futureson the success of the telephone. And alwaysat their head was Barton, as a sort of humanswitchboard, who linked them all together and kept them busy. ( 164 J
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■,N()S M. liARioN, KIR FOR I \ vi-.ARS TiiK iii-;ai> OF Till-; \vf.stf;rn i:i,I:ctric THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE In appearance, Enos M. Barton closely re-sembles ex-President Eliot, of Harvard. He isslow in speech, simple in manner, and with arare sagacity in business affairs. He was not anorganizer, in the modern sense. His policy wasto pick out a man, put him in a responsible place,and judge him by results. Engineers could be-come bookkeepers, and bookkeepers could be-come engineers. Such a plan worked well inthe earlier days, when the art of telephony wasin the making, and when there was no source ofauthority on telephonic problems. Barton isthe bishop emeritus of the Western Electricto-day; and the big industry is now being runby a group of young hustlers, with H. B. Thayerat the head of the table. Thayer is a Vermonterwho has climbed the ladder of experience fromits lower rungs to the top. He is a typicalYankee — lean, shrewd, tireless, and with a cold-blooded sense of j

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