Our fathers did not denounce the telephone as an "American humbug," but they did describe it as a curious electric "toy" and ridiculed the notion that it could ever have any practical value.

Even after Alexander Graham Bell and his associates had completely demonstrated its usefulness, the Western Union Telegraph Company refused to purchase all their patent rights for $100,000! Only forty years have passed since the telephone made such an inauspicious beginning.

It remains now, as it was then, essentially an American achievement.

Other nations have their telephone systems, but it is only in the United States that its possibilities have been even faintly realized.

It is not until Americans visit foreign countries that they understand that, imperfect as in certain directions their industrial and social organization may be, in this respect at least their nation is preeminent.
The United States contains nearly all the telephones in existence, to be exact, about seventy-five per cent.