It had outgrown its early days of ridicule and incredulity.

It was paying wages and salaries and even dividends.

Evidently it had arrived on the scene in the nick of time--after the telegraph and before the trolleys and electric lights.
Had it been born ten years later, it might not have been able to survive.

So delicate a thing as a baby telephone could scarcely have protected itself against the powerful currents of electricity that came into general use in 1886, if it had not first found out a way of hiding safely underground.
The first declaration in favor of an underground system was made by the Boston company in 1880.

"It may be expedient to place our entire system underground," said the sorely perplexed manager, "whenever a practicable method is found of accomplishing: it." All manner of theories were afloat but Theodore N.Vail, who was usually the man of constructive imagination in emergencies, began in 1882 a series of actual experiments at Attleborough, Massachusetts, to find out exactly what could, and what could not, be done with wires that were buried in the earth.
A five-mile trench was dug beside a railway track.