The practical result is that it is now possible to send three telephone messages and eight telegraph messages over two pairs of wires--all at the same time.

Professor Pupin's invention has resulted in economies that amount to millions of dollars, and has made possible long distance lines to practically every part of the United States.
Thus many great inventive minds have produced the physical telephone.
We can point to several men--Bell, Blake, Carty, Scribner, Barrett, Pupin--and say of each one, "Without his work the present telephone system could not exist." But business genius, as well as mechanical genius, explains this achievement.

For the first four or five years of its existence, the new invention had hard sailing.

Bell and Thomas Watson, in order to fortify their finances, were forced to travel around the country, giving a kind of vaudeville entertainment.

Bell made a speech explaining the new invention, while a cornet player, located in another part of the town, played solos, the music reaching the audience through several telephone instruments placed against the walls.