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THE FUTURE OF THE TELEPHONE.
In the Spring of 1907 Theodore N.Vail, a rugged, ruddy, white-haired man, was superintending the building of a big barn in northern Vermont.
His house stood near-by, on a balcony of rolling land that overlooked the town of Lyndon and far beyond, across evergreen forests to the massive bulk of Burke Mountain.

His farm, very nearly ten square miles in area, lay back of the house in a great oval of field and woodland, with several dozen cottages in the clearings.

His Welsh ponies and Swiss cattle were grazing on the May grass, and the men were busy with the ploughs and harrows and seeders.

It was almost thirty years since he had been called in to create the business structure of telephony, and to shape the general plan of its development.