Excerpt from Telephony, Vol. 1 of 6: A Manual of the Design, Construction, and Operation of Telephone Exchanges IT is veraciously reported that a quarter of a century ago, when a well-known New York capitalist was asked to invest in some Bell Telephone stock, he gave for his refusal the reason that the American District Telegraph boys were amply sufficient, and a Telephone enterprise would surely fail, as there was no room for an additional company in the business of transmitting messages. To day the A. D. T. Is a byword, while Telephony, ranking as one of the foremost of modern industries, bravely holds its own in the electrical quintet of the Telegraph, the Telephone, the Street Railway, Electric Lighting, and Power Transmission. As a factor in modern civilization it is a peer of any electrical industry, while from a finan cial standpoint it is, to say the least, a lusty third, with a strong probability that ere long it may lead the list. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.