The Future of Transoceanic Telephony

The Future of Transoceanic Telephony* By OLIVER E. BUCKLEY President, Bell Telephotie Laboratories T X / H E N Sir William Thomson saw the newly invented telephone of * * Alexander Graham Bell at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, he stated that "it was the greatest marvel hitherto achieved by the telegraph." Recognizing that the limitations of the first crude instruments would soon be removed, he remarked that "the invention is yet in its infancy and is susceptible of great improvements," and also said "with somewhat more advanced plans and more powerful apparatus, we may confidently expect that Mr. Bell will give us the means of making voice and spoken words audible through the electric wire to an ear hundreds of miles distant." Lord Kelvin lived to see these prophecies rapidly proved true. Had he lived only a few years longer, he would have seen the quality of transmitted speech brought close to perfection, and he would have seen the hundreds of miles extended to thousands. That Lord Kelvin should have looked upon the telephone as an improvement on the telegraph was natural, for that is the way in which Bell approached it. Bell was experimenting with his harmonic telegraph when he invented the telephone. He was extending the possibilities of the telegraph by making use of a wider band of frequencies than were employed in the systems of Wheatstone and Morse. With its sufficient range of frequencies, Bell's system proved capable of transmitting speech as well as simple signals.