On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, standing in a little attic at No. 5 Exeter Place, Boston, sent through his crude telephone the first spoken words ever carried over a wire, and the words were heard and understood by his associate, Thomas A. Watson, who was at the receiver in an adjacent room. On that day the telephone was born, and the first message went over the only telephone line in the world - a line less than a hundred feet long. On January 25, 1915, less than forty years later, this same Alexander Graham Bell, in New York, talked to this same Thomas A. Watson, in San Francisco, over a wire stretching 3,400 miles across the continent. In that memorable year of 1876, Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, while visiting the Philadelphia Centennial, was attracted to Bell's modest telephone exhibit, picked up the receiver, listened as Professor Bell talked at the other end of the room, and, amazed at the wonder of the thing, cried out, "My God - it speaks!"

Dr. Alexander Graham Bell at the Opening op the Transcontinental Line.

In front of Dr. Bell is the replica of his original telephone, and to his left is the glass case containing a piece of the wire over which Dr. Bell and Mr. Watson carried on the first telephone conversation in the world.

*Illustrations by the courtesy of the American Telephone and Telegraph Co.

From that time, the first telephone exhibit became the center of attraction at the exposition. Had Dom Pedro lived to see the Panama-Pacific Exposition he might have listened to Professor Bell talking not merely from the other end of a room, but from the other side of a continent.

Some idea of the rapid growth of the telephone business in the United States may be gathered from the statistician's figures, which show that in 1880 there were less than 100,000 telephones in use in this country, and in 1915 there were more than 9,000,000 telephones in the Bell System alone. Of the 14,000,000 telephones in the world, 10,000,000 are in this country. Sixty-five per cent of all the telephones in the world are in this country, although it has only five and five-tenths per cent of the world's population. The Bell System alone reaches 70,000 places, 5,000 more than the-number of post-offices and 10,000 more than the number of railroad stations. The telephone wire mileage in the United States is over 22,000,000 miles. In the Bell System there are over 18,000,000 miles of wire which carry over 26,000,000 telephone talks daily - or nearly 9,000,000,000 per year.

Central Telephone Exchange, New York City, 1880.

Essential Factor in American Life.

Such broad use is made of the telephone service of America that the progress in telephony is an essential factor in all American progress.

A visiting Englishman envying the light, airy accommodations in the tall office buildings in American cities, has sagely said that the skyscraper would be impossible without the adequate telephone service which is here provided.

In the housing of the people the telephone is a pioneering agent for better conditions. In the cities telephone service is indispensable in apartment houses and hotels which raise people above the noise and dust of the street. In the suburbs the telephone and the trolley make the waste places desirable homes, and although a man may walk some distance to reach some transportation line, the telephone must enter his own dwelling place before he is content to live there.

A Typical OperatinG Room in an American City, with the most Modern Bell Switchboard.

This desirable decentralization of the population in which the telephone has been so important a factor extends beyond the suburbs to the rural districts, and the American farmer with his wife and family is blessed by facilities for communication unknown in any other part of the world. The fact that the farms and ranches in this country, and especially in the west, have been of comparatively large area, has had a tendency to make American farm life particularly lonely. It is safe to say that nothing has done more to relieve this loneliness and prevent the drift from the farms to the cities, than the widespread establishment of rural telephone service.

The telephone development of the United States is not confined to the large centers of population, but is well distributed, the large number of farm telephones in this country being in strong contrast to the small number of farm telephones in European countries.

It is obvious that the ordinary methods of commerce and manufacture would have to be radically made over if the telephone service should lose any of its present efficiency or if it should fail to advance so as to meet the constantly increasing demands made upon it. With the first day of telephone congestion ordinary business would come to a standstill, and when an adjustment was made, everybody would find himself slowed down, doing less work in longer hours and at greater expense, and being unable to take advantage of opportunities for advancement which he had come to consider an inalienable right.

Not only would methods be changed, but the physical structure of business, especially in cities, would be completely metamorphosed. The top floors of office buildings and hotels would be immediately less desirable. In tall buildings the multitude of messengers and the frequent passing in and out would demand the increase in elevator facilities and even the enlargement of halls and doorways. Many of the narrower streets would be impassable. Factories and warehouses now located in the open country where land is cheap and the natural conditions of working and living are most favorable, would be relocated in cities as close as possible to their administrative and merchandising headquarters.