【英文原著类】THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE(电话发展史).pdf

THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE
THE HISTORY OF THE
TELEPHONE
BY HERBERT N. CASSON
1
THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE
PREFACE
Thirty-five short years, and presto! the newborn art of telephony is
fullgrown. Three million telephones are now scattered abroad in foreign
countries, and seven millions are massed here, in the land of its birth.
So entirely has the telephone outgrown the ridicule with which, as
many people can well remember, it was first received, that it is now in
most places taken for granted, as though it were a part of the natural
phenomena of this . It has so marvellously extended the facilities of
conversation--that "art in which a man has all mankind petitors"--
that it is now an indispensable help to whoever would live the convenient
life. The disadvantage of being deaf and dumb to all absent persons, which
was universal in pre-telephonic days, has now happily been e; and
I hope that this story of how and by whom it was done will be a e
addition to American libraries.
It is such a story as the telephone itself might tell, if it could speak
with a voice of its own. It is not technical. It is not statistical. It is not
exhaustive. It is so brief, in fact, that a second volume could readily be
made by describing the careers of telephone leaders whose names I find
have been omitted unintentionally from this book--such indispensable men,
for instance, as William R. Driver, who has signed more telephone
cheques and larger ones than any other man; Geo. S. Hibbard, Henry W.
Pope, and W. D. Sargent, three veterans who know telephony in all its
phases; e Y. Wallace, the last survivor of the Rocky Mountain
pioneers; Jasper N. Keller, of Texas and New England; W. T. Gentry, the
central figure of the Southeast, and the following presidents of telephone
companies: Bernard E. Sunny, of Chicago; E. B. Field, of Denver; D. Leet
Wilson, of Pittsburg; L. G. Richardson, of Indianapolis; Caspar E. Yost, of
Omaha; James E. Caldwell, of Nas