Here it ran for several weeks as a telephone system by day and a burglar-alarm by night.
No money was paid by the bankers.

The service was given to them as an exhibition and an advertisement.

The little shelf with its five telephones was no more like the marvellous exchanges of to-day than a canoe is like a Cunarder, but it was unquestionably the first place where several telephone wires came together and could be united.
Soon afterwards, Holmes took his telephones out of the banks, and started a real telephone business among the express companies of Boston.

But by this time several exchanges had been opened for ordinary business, in New Haven, Bridgeport, New York, and Philadelphia.

Also, a man from Michigan had arrived, with the hardihood to ask for a State agency--George W.Balch, of Detroit.