tele-phone

Updated: June 6, 2025

Before the telephone was invented, the telegraph had been made a State monopoly; and the tele-phone was regarded as a species of telegraph. The public officials did not see that a telephone system is a highly complex and technical problem, much more like a piano factory or a steel-mill.

Herbert Newton Casson - The History of the Telephone

And so, having undertaken to give telephone service, they presently found themselves battling with the most intricate and baffling engineering problem of modern times the construction around the tele-phone of such a mechanism as would bring it into universal service. The first of these men was Thomas A. Watson, the young mechanic who had been hired as Bell's helper.

Herbert Newton Casson - The History of the Telephone