It carried messages from the first day; and more, it raised the whole telephone business to a higher level.

It swept away the prejudice that telephone service could become nothing more than a neighborhood affair.

"It was the salvation of the business," said Edward J.Hill.

It marked a turning-point in the history of the telephone, when the day of small things was ended and the day of great things was begun.

No one man, no hundred men, had created it.