Each short little wire stood by itself, with one instrument at each end.

There were no operators, switchboards, or exchanges.

But there had now come a time when more than two persons wanted to be in the same conversational group.

This was a larger use of the telephone; and while Bell himself had foreseen it, he had not worked out a plan whereby it could be carried out.

Here was the new problem, and a most stupendous one--how to link together three telephones, or three hundred, or three thousand, or three million, so that any two of them could be joined at a moment's notice.
And that was not all.