第58章 CHAPTER IX THE FUTURE OF THE TELEPHONE(4)

By their advice, there is now twenty-five million dollars' worth of reserve plant in the various Bell Companies, waiting for the country to grow up to it. Even in the city of New York, one-half of the cable ducts are empty, in expectation of the greater city of eight million population which is scheduled to arrive in 1928.

There are perhaps few more impressive evidences of practical optimism and confidence than a new telephone exchange, with two-thirds of its wires waiting for the business of the future.

Eventually, this foresight department will expand. It may, if a leader of genius appear, become the first real corps of practical sociologists, which will substitute facts for the present hotch-potch of theories. It will prepare a "fundamental plan" of the whole United States, showing the centre of each industry and the main runways of traffic. It will act upon the basic fact that WHEREVER THERE IS INTERDEPENDENCE, THERE IS BOUND TO BE TELEPHONY; and it will therefore prepare maps of interdependence, showing the widely scattered groups of industry and finance, and the lines that weave them into a pattern of national cooperation.

As yet, no nation, not even our own, has seen the full value of the long-distance telephone.

Few have the imagination to see what has been made possible, and to realize that an actual face-to-face conversation may take place, even though there be a thousand miles between. Neither can it seem credible that a man in a distant city may be located as readily as though he were close at hand. It is too amazing to be true, and possibly a new generation will have to arrive before it will be taken for granted and acted upon freely. Ultimately, there can be no doubt that long-distance telephony will be regarded as a national asset of the highest value, for the reason that it can prevent so much of the enormous economic waste of travel.

Nothing that science can say will ever decrease the marvel of a long-distance conversation, and there may come in the future an Interpreter who will put it before our eyes in the form of a moving-picture. He will enable us to follow the flying words in a talk from Boston to Denver.

We will flash first to Worcester, cross the Hudson on the high bridge at Poughkeepsie, swing southwest through a dozen coal towns to the outskirts of Philadelphia, leap across the Susquehanna, zigzag up and down the Alleghenies into the murk of Pittsburg, cross the Ohio at Wheeling, glance past Columbus and Indianapolis, over the Wabash at Terre Haute, into St. Louis by the Eads bridge, through Kansas City, across the Missouri, along the corn-fields of Kansas, and then on--on--on with the Sante Fe Railway, across vast plains and past the brink of the Grand Canyon, to Pueblo and the lofty city of Denver. Twenty-five hundred miles along a thousand tons of copper wire! From Bunker Hill to Pike's Peak IN A SECOND!

Herbert Spencer, in his autobiography, alludes to the impressive fact that while the eye is reading a single line of type, the earth has travelled thirty miles through space. But this, in telephony, would be slow travelling. It is simple everyday truth to say that while your eye is reading this dash,--, a telephone sound can be carried from New York to Chicago.

There are many reasons to believe that for the practical idealists of the future, the supreme study will be the force that makes such miracles possible. Six thousand million dollars--one-twentieth of our national wealth--is at the present time invested in electrical development. The Electrical Age has not yet arrived; but it is at hand; and no one can tell how brilliant the result may be, when the creative minds of a nation are focussed upon the subdual of this mysterious force, which has more power and more delicacy than any other force that man has been able to harness.

As a tame and tractable energy, Electricity is new. It has no past and no pedigree. It is younger than many people who are now alive.

Among the wise men of Greece and Rome, few knew its existence, and none put it to any practical use. The wisest knew that a piece of amber, when rubbed, will attract feathery substances.

But they regarded this as poetry rather than science. There was a pretty legend among the Phoenicians that the pieces of amber were the petrified tears of maidens who had thrown themselves into the sea because of unrequited love, and each bead of amber was highly prized. It was worn as an amulet and a symbol of purity.

Not for two thousand years did any one dream that within its golden heart lay hidden the secret of a new electrical civilization.

Not even in 1752, when Benjamin Franklin flew his famous kite on the banks of the Schuylkill River, and captured the first CANNED LIGHTNING, was there any definite knowledge of electrical energy. His lightning-rod was regarded as an insult to the deity of Heaven. It was blamed for the earthquake of 1755. And not until the telegraph of Morse came into general use, did men dare to think of the thunder-bolt of Jove as a possible servant of the human race.