Watson, also located at a distance, varied the program by singing songs via telephone.

These lecture tours not only gave Bell the money which he sorely needed but advertised the innovation.

There followed a few scattering attempts to introduce the telephone into every-day use and telephone exchanges were established in New York, Boston, Bridgeport, and New Haven.

But these pioneers had the hostility of the most powerful corporation of the day--the Western Union Telegraph Company--and they lacked aggressive leaders.
In 1878, Mr.Gardiner Hubbard, Bell's earliest backer, and now his father-in-law, became acquainted with a young man who was then serving in Washington as General Superintendent of the Railway Mail Service.
This young man was Theodore N.Vail.His energy and enterprise so impressed Hubbard that he immediately asked Vail to become General Manager of the company which he was then forming to exploit the telephone.

Viewed from the retrospection of forty years this offer certainly looks like one of the greatest prizes in American business.
What it signified at that time, however, is apparent from the fact that the office paid a salary of $3500 a year and that for the first ten years Vail did not succeed in collecting a dollar of this princely remuneration.