But the American Telephone and Telegraph Company represents an industry which has made not a single "swollen fortune," whose largest stockholder is the wife of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor (a woman who, being totally deaf, has never talked over the telephone); which has not corrupted legislatures or courts; which has steadily decreased the prices of its products as business and profits have increased; which has never issued watered stock or declared fictitious dividends; and which has always manifested a high sense of responsibility in its dealings with the public.
Two forces, American science and American business capacity, have accomplished this result.

As a mechanism, this American telephone system is the product not of one but of many minds.

What most strikes the imagination is the story of Alexander Graham Bell, yet other names--Carty, Scribner, Pupin--play a large part in the story.
The man who discovered that an electric current had the power of transmitting sound over a copper wire knew very little about electricity.

Had he known more about this agency and less about acoustics, Bell once said himself, he would never have invented the telephone.

His father and grandfather had been teachers of the deaf and dumb and had made important researches in acoustics.