INTERESTING FACTS

    Destroyed Telephones
This is a classic example of what happened to most of the telephones of the early days when they were taken out of service. These "Dean" desk and wall sets were thrown in a well by the Pacific Telephone Company in Jacksonville, Oregon sometime around the turn of the century. Stories have been told about how telephones were burned, buried, crushed, thrown off the end of piers and destroyed in many other diabolical ways. This is precisely why they are so hard to find today.

Dr. Bell's Prediction Comes True
He Talks to a Man "in a Distant Place"

The inventor of the telephone in 1892, opens long-distance service between New York and Chicago over 800 miles of open wire line. Only 14 years before, in 1878, he had predicted that some day "a man in one part of the country may communicate by word of mouth with another in a distant place." Today all New York-Chicago connections are in underground cable, also forecast by Bell. The man with full beard is John E. Hudson, then President of the Bell Telephone Company. Note the Cabinet Desk Set that Dr. Bell is using.

Not as Simple as It Looks

Your telephone is made up of 201 parts, every one of which had to be planned, produced and assembled with an unusual degree of accuracy.

Such multiplicity of detail is unavoidable in the work of manufacturing telephones, cable, switchboards, and other telephone apparatus. The number of seperate parts entering into all of these products is 110,000; the number of separate parts in a certain well known automobile is 3,000.

To see that each of these many parts fits into its proper place, calls for constant watchfulness and skill in the men and women whose lifework it is.

House Call

The complete telephone man -- 1911 vintage -- was mobile, mechanized and well equipped. With his tools around his waist, he carried telephones on his back, chest and in his bicycle sack. As today, telephone men 80 years ago were safety-minded, which in that era included wearing your sleeve guards and trouser clips.