neighbors.... It is conceivable that cables of telephone wires could be telephone itself. There were communication exchanges before the using telegraph instruments Thomas B. A. David had one in Pittsburg, operate. And William A. Childs had a third, for lawyers only, in New York, which used dials at first and afterwards printing machines. These little exchanges had set out to do the work that is done to-day by said: "It is possible to connect every man's house, office or factory wonders of the electrical world. There is probably no other part of is the home of the switchboard. It is not any one's invention, as the The idea of the exchange is somewhat older than the idea of the may never be; but it has already evolved far enough to be one of the private dwellings, shops, etc., and uniting them through the main cable the telephone, and they did it after a fashion, in a most crude and using printing-telegraph machines, which required little skill to telephone exchange. it arrived. laid underground, or suspended overhead, connecting by branch wires with building up small constituencies that were ready for the telephone when reading, as stale as Darwin's "Origin of Species," or Adam Smith's expensive way. They helped to prepare the way for the telephone, by with a central station, so as to give him direct communication with his invention of the telephone. Thomas B. Doolittle had one in Bridgeport, telephone was. It is a growing mechanism that is not yet finished, and with a central office." This remarkable prophecy has now become stale Bell himself was perhaps the first to see the future of the telephone an American city's equipment that is as sensitive and efficient as a exchange. In a letter written to some English capitalists in 1878, he