The era of electronic communications began with a simple sentence, "What hath God
wrought?," tapped out over a telegraph line strung between Baltimore, MD and the nation's capital on May
24th, 1844 (Transatlantic Cable Communications,[1]). Most sources
say that Samuel F. B. Morse envisioned the basic idea of an electromagnetic telegraph in 1832 while making the transatlantic
trip back from Europe. Morse demonstrated a working telegraph set in 1836.
The introduction of the circuit relay followed soon after, making telegraph transmission possible
over any 
distance. And in 1843 the U.S. Congress voted $30,000
for the experimental line between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.
The connection was fast completed and in a public demonstration,
this historic message flashed across the line. The Western Union
Telegraph Company made instant millionaires of its
original investors.[1]
Vast distances began to shrink as it "took no more time to send a telegraph message across the country then it did to send one across the street."[1] Telegraph poles sprang up like weeds after a spring rain all across the highways and railroads of North America and Europe. By 1861 the first cross-country connection was complete and permanent coast-to-coast telegraph communication began in the United States. Soon the European continent and North America were each well connected with national telegraph service.
Frederick Gisborne, who had resigned in 1851 as Chief Officer of the Nova Scotia Telegraph Company to form the Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company, planned to link Nova Scotia and Newfoundland using an overland cable. He envisioned an eventual submarine cable across the Cabot Strait.[1] But facing bankruptcy and huge debts after the project's failure, Gisborne left Halifax and headed for New York in 1854. In New York, he joined forces with Cyrus W. Field, a wealthy New York merchant. While Field tried to visualize how a submarine line could become a reality after his initial meeting with Gisborne, he was struck by an idea to extend the cable to Europe.[1] Thus began one of the greatest sagas in telecommunication history in a venture that would touch the fields of science, politics, finance and geography. A preliminary transatlantic venture in 1857 ended in failure after ten days when the cable dispenser stopped too quickly thereby snapping the wire.
"Pay it out, Oh! Pay it out.
As long as you are able;
For if you put the darned brakes on
Pop goes the cable."
Rhyme written after the failed effort of 1857 [1]
Cyrus Field raised capital to launch a second attempt the following year. After redesigning the equipment including an anti-locking braking system for the cable dispenser, the expedition set off - this time using two ships heading in opposite directions from the center of the Atlantic. On August 5th, 1858, the ship Niagara anchored at the Newfoundland coast after laying 1,016 miles of cable; days later, the crew and the cable aboard the ship Agamemnon, successfully reached the coast of Ireland (Telephone, the First Hundred Years [2]).
Although the completion of the project was celebrated in grand style, this first cable was plagued with problems. The signals it transmitted were very weak. When an engineer applied some 5,000 volts to the cable (well beyond its dielectric capabilities) to overcome signal degradation, it flashed over and burned out after being in operation only 26 days.[1]
Field again raised funds and mounted another expedition in 1865. This time, however, the cable was manufactured in one long piece: the 2,700 miles of wire took eight months to complete at a rate of approximately fourteen miles per day.[1]
Only one ship, the Great Eastern, was capable of carrying this wire. With just 600 miles remaining in the expedition however, the cable snagged and the end slipped into the sea. After a nine day struggle to rescue the cable, it became obvious that the effort was futile. Cyrus Field and his backers ordered a new cable and designed better grappling equipment. On July 13th, 1866, the Great Eastern left Ireland laying out the cable all the way to Heart's Content, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. The expedition landed at Heart's Content on July 27th. "We arrived here at nine o'clock this morning," Cyrus Field wrote, on that day in 1866, "All well. Thank God, the cable is laid, and is in perfect working order." The Great Eastern quickly returned to sea and on August 12th began grappling for the broken cable from the earlier effort which lay two and a half miles under the Atlantic. The cable was recovered and on September 17th, 1866, this second cable was brought ashore at Heart's Content thus completing a parallel circuit for transatlantic communication.[1] The United States and Europe have been in constant electronic touch ever since.
If the telegraph is compared to the first Internet, the telephone is certainly comparable to the second generation of the Internet. Problems developed with capacity of the telegraph system and experiments were soon underway to rectify the limitations of the existing telegraph wires.
In 1873 Alexander Graham Bell began experimenting with the "harmonic telegraph," a device which would have allowed several separate telegraph communications to be transmitted simultaneously over the same pair of telegraph wires. He found competition in the form of Chicago's Elisha Gray, one of the co-founders of the Western Electric Company. At this time Bell had the financial backing of Gardiner Greene Hubbard and Thomas Sanders in a partnership. Later known as the "Bell Patent Agreement," Bell would perform all the inventing, Hubbard and Sanders would provide all financial support, and all three would share in any patents Bell obtained. Bell's work with this device would eventually lead to his development of the telephone.[2]
By 1874 Bell was also working on a method to transmit human speech via wire, using a concept he called "undulating current." A year later Bell, discouraged with his lack of progress with the harmonic telegraph, traveled to Washington D.C. to demonstrate his telephone work to Joseph Henry, one of the most prominent scientists of the day and secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Henry encouraged Bell to continue his work on the telephone. The catch was, Bell's financial backers wanted him to continue work on the harmonic telegraph, not the telephone.[2] Bell would eventually lose the race with Gray on the development of the harmonic telegraph; the competition between them now was to develop the telephone.
By June 2nd, Bell's undulating current theory was proven when he heard the sound of a vibrating spring transmitted over the wires of his harmonic telegraph. The very next day, he and Thomas A. Watson tested their first telephone. It transmitted audible but not intelligible speech sounds (Telecom History Timeline).[4] Encouraged by these results, Bell and Watson continued working with their gallows-type apparatus (named for the shape of its wooden frame), but also began working on other forms of magnetic transmitter telephones. By February 1876, they began experiments with variable resistance transmitters. On February 14th, Hubbard filed the telephone patent application on behalf of Bell, just hours ahead of the caveat (warning to other inventors), which Elisha Gray filed in the very same Patent Office. U.S. Patent number 174,465 was granted on March 3rd and issued to Bell on March 7th. Upon only a lucky few hours rests Bell's legal claim to the telephone patent and on that the ultimate foundation of the U.S. telephone system.[2]
On March 10th, Bell uttered a simple sentence that would forever change the world of telecommunication: "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!" Legend has it that Bell spilled acid on his hand and shouted this into his device. Bell's own notes render the verity of this story questionable.[2] News of this success failed however, to impress Hubbard. On March 13th, when he came to Bell's workshop to hear the telephone for himself, something failed in the device and Hubbard only heard sounds too indistinct to understand. Hubbard decreed that Bell should continue work on his harmonic telegraph. Bell instead began variations on the successful March 10th experiment and, by the beginning of April, had achieved the successful transmission of speech using a magneto-induction device. It was more reliable than his liquid variable resistance device but it produced a much weaker signal.[2]
Bell and Watson soon followed with a bevy of publicity in order to promote the telephone. On June 25th, Bell exhibited his telephone apparatus at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. The Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II, was in attendance and, according to a Portuguese translation exclaimed, "My God! It talks!" upon seeing its demonstration.[2]
Watson began working on the telephone full time at this point, contracting with Hubbard and receiving in exchange one-tenth interest on all Bell patents. Hubbard remained skeptical despite the early successes of Bell and Watson. During the fall of 1876 Hubbard offered to sell the Bell patents to William Orton, President of Western Union, for $100,000.[2] In what is regarded as one of the biggest blunders in business history, Orton refused, saying "what use has this company for an electrical toy."
On August 10th the world's first 'long-distance' telephone call was placed, albeit a one-way connection, in Ontario, Canada. Bell's father and uncle were at the transmitter end in Brantford, Ontario while Bell listened in Paris, Ontario. The connection took place over borrowed telegraph wires spanning eight miles. It was also the world's first telephone call to be placed over outdoor wires. The first two-way long-distance conversation took place on October 9th between Boston and Cambridge using borrowed telegraph lines and magneto telephones designed to both transmit and receive.[2] November 26th brought yet another successful long-distance call over 16 miles of borrowed telegraph line between Boston and Salem. Now testing the limits of contemporary technology, Bell and Watson attempted a call of 143 miles between Boston and North Conway, New Hampshire (again using a borrowed telegraph line), but they failed hear intelligible speech. Watson attributed this to the poor condition of the telegraph line.
On the 3rd of April, 1877, the first telephone conversation took place between New York City and Boston.[2] Bell was in New York City while Watson was shouting from his "telephone booth," the floor of his bedroom surrounded with a tunnel of blankets so their land-lady would not have to listen to the noise. The call was again transmitted over a borrowed telegraph line and conversation was difficult and impractical.
In early May, Bell conducted the most successful public demonstrations of the telephone. Bell and Watson for the most part abandoned their lab in favor of public lecture demonstrations in Boston and other cities.[2] Bell would sit on the stage of the lecture hall with a telephone beside him with other telephones placed throughout the hall. Watson, along with various musicians, would be at some remote point up to twenty-five miles away, connected to the lecture hall over rented telegraph wires. Hubbard was finally ready to accept the telephone as a useful instrument of communication. On July 9th, 1877, The Bell Telephone Company was formed as a voluntary, unincorporated association. Based on success of an earlier venture in leasing shoemaking machines, Hubbard decided telephone service would be leased rather than purchased by consumers, a practice that would remain until the later half of the 1900's.[2]
The first local telephone exchanges (rather than private
lines between two or more parties) began operation in earnest in 1878; the first
in New Haven, Connecticut on January
28th. Many cities followed soon after. On December
1st the first five telephones linked by a central
switch were connected in Washington, D. C. The first multiple switchboard
began operation in Chicago in 1879. Cables were strung in the handrail of
the walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge, which was under construction at
that time, linking New York City to Brooklyn. 1879 also saw the
rapid growth of local telephone exchanges operated by local telephone
companies under license from Bell throughout the United States. Early
exchanges identified customers by name rather than by a telephone number. A
measles outbreak in Lowell, Massachusetts, lead to the use of telephone numbers
so that temporary operators could quickly identify customers' lines instead
of having to match callers' names with line
numbers.[2]
By this time, Bell Telephone Company had reorganized into
two groups: New England Telephone, tasked with issuing licenses for
the establishment of local telephone operating companies in New
England; and a reorganized American Bell, which granted licenses
everywhere else. As part of this reorganization, Bell and Hubbard ceded control of
the company to Boston venture capitalists. One of Hubbard's final but
far-reaching acts was to bring aboard the key individual who eventually would establish
the communications giant American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), Theodore Vail.[2]
The greatest technological advance in the 1880's was the establishment and rapid growth of inter-city long-distance service. On January 12th 1881, the first commercially available long-distance telephone line, which spanned the forty-five miles between Boston, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island, opened for business. This connection was established over several single pieces of galvanized-iron wire, using the ground as a return path. But earth-ground systems were plagued by noise and interference, mostly from telegraph traffic. This long-distance line was considered to a failure. But before it was abandoned, John Cartey, an engineer, discovered by accident that connecting one of the long-distance wires to form a return path, rather than relying on earth-ground, dramatically reduced the interference and improved service.[2] This type of two-wire circuit became known as a metallic circuit.
Another problem plagued long-distance circuits of the day. Telephone signals grew weaker with each mile of wire. Telegraph and early telephone wire were made of galvanized-iron wire, and line amplification had yet to be discovered. Copper wire had less attenuation than galvanized-iron, but was manufactured in those days with a heat-treated, or annealed process, which rendered it too soft to be used on overhead wire spans. The wire would stretch and collapse under its own weight unless it was so thick that it became unusable.
In late 1877, Thomas Doolittle, manager of a mutual telegraph company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, began experiments with hard-drawn copper wire, the product of a new manufacturing process. He contracted with the Ansonia Brass Company to manufacture this wire using an innovative process which took four years to perfect. Use of this new wire would allow the extension of telephone service to greater distances. In September 1884, a two hundred ninety-two mile line between New York and Boston was completed and opened for commercial service.[2] Bell and Watson experimented with this line and on March 27th, the first successful long-distance conversation between the two cities took place. The original experimental line, consisting of two twelve gauge hard-drawn copper wires, worked for about ninety minutes before finally failing, yet the experiment was considered a success. The West Coast did not lag far behind the progress of the East. Toll service began between Colorado Springs and Pueblo, Colorado, around this time, as it did between Sacramento and San Francisco, California.
Theodore Vail, serving as General Manager of American Bell and President of Metropolitan Telephone and Telegraph Company (American Bell's New York licensee), felt that a large and efficient long-distance network was of great importance. Vail believed that the long-distance network would insure American Bell's survival; telephone subscribers would soon demand city-to-city service, and it would take an independent telephone company years to establish its own long-distance network. The current maze of long-distance lines was a cacophony of connections, with wires criss-crossing territories of independent Bell licensees, often using the same poles. Vail predicted that the confusion would lead to disputes over who owned the right to the revenue generated by the lines. And, with its capital limited under Massachusetts legislature to the relatively modest figure of ten million dollars, American Bell did not have sufficient funds to finance network expansion.[2]
Vail's solution was to form a new subsidiary of American Bell, whose sole objective was to construct and operate long-distance telephone lines. On February 28th, 1885, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company was chartered in New York State with Vail as its President. The company's certificate of incorporation declared its purpose to be "constructing, buying, owning, leasing, or otherwise obtaining lines of electric telegraph partly within and partly beyond the limits of the State of New York, and of equipping, using, operating, or otherwise maintaining the same." [2]
Part II will be presented in the next issue of Academic Computing.
Sources
1 "The Cable Story in Canso." Transatlantic Cable Communications: http://www.schoolnet.ca/collections/canso/ (a project sponsored by the Canso Historical Society, the town of Canso, Canada, and Industry Canada)
2 Brooks, John. Telephone, the First Hundred Years. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
3 Coll, Steve. The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T. New York: Atheneum, 1986.
4 "Early History & Great Fervor." Telecom History Timeline: http://webbconsult.com/timeline.html Webb & Associates, Independent Telecommunications Consultants, Canton MA.
Jeff Nucciarone, Center for Academic Computing
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