The magneto call bell--still used in certain backward districts--for many years gave fair results for calling purposes, but the automatic switch, which enables us to get central by merely picking up the receiver, has made possible our great urban service.

It was several years before the telephone makers developed so essential a thing as a satisfactory wire.
Silver, which gave excellent results, was obviously too costly, and copper, the other metal which had many desirable qualities, was too soft.

Thomas B.Doolittle solved this problem by inventing a hard-drawn copper wire.

A young man of twenty-two, John J.Carty, suggested a simple device for exorcising the hundreds of "mysterious noises" that had made the use of the telephone so agonizing.

It was caused, Carty pointed out, by the circumstance that the telephone, like the telegraph, used a ground circuit for the return wire; the resultant scrapings and moanings and howlings were merely the multitudinous voices of mother earth herself.