Then Barrett discovered a method of twisting fifty pairs of wires--since grown to 2400 pairs-into a cable, wrapping them in paper and molding them in lead, and the wires were now taken from poles and placed in conduits underground.
But perhaps the most romantic figure in telephone history, next to Bell, is that of a humble Servian immigrant who came to this country as a boy and obtained his first employment as a rubber in a Turkish bath.

Michael I.Pupin was graduated from Columbia, studied afterward in Germany, and became absorbed in the new subject of electromechanics.

In particular he became interested in a telephone problem that had bothered the greatest experts for years.

One thing that had prevented the great extension of the telephone, especially for long distance work, was the size of the wire.

Long distance lines up to 1900 demanded wire about one-eighth of an inch thick--as thick as a fairsized lead pencil; and, for this reason, the New York-Chicago line, built in 1893, consumed 870,000 pounds of copper wire of this size.