TALKING ACROSS THE CONTINENT A TELEPHONE ACHIEVEMENT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 57, 9 March 1915, Page 6

TALKING ACROSS THE CONTINENT A TELEPHONE ACHIEVEMENT.

(MOM OUn OWN CORRESPONDENT.) SAN FRANCISCO, Oth February. For the first time in the history of telephoning it i« possible to talk by wir« clear across the Continent of America, Telephone conversations between New York and San Francisco, a distance of 3400 miles, are now an everyday occurrence, The voice carries clearly, just as much so as over any long-distance 'phone of a few hundred miles— and as a commercial proposition the service is entirely feasible and practicable. Naturally, the charge for talking across thd continent is a little "steep. The price is 20 dollars (or JB4) for a conversation, of three minutes. . One of the first uses to which the new service was put upon, its institution was to clinch a pugilistic match between Willie Ritchie, the American light-weight champion, and Freddie Welsh, of England, the world's champion. Ritchie, ftom San Francisco, talked with a New York promoter, and they came to terms. On the day the service was opened there was a pleasant ceremony. President Wilson, from Washington, talked with San Francisco, and the editors of New York and San Francisco newspapers exchanged greetings across the continent. There was also a con. versation between Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of tho telephone, in New York, and Thomas A. Watson, who was Bell's electrician at the time of the invention, in Sao. Francisco.