The next problem that faced the young men
of the telephone, as soon as they had escaped from
the clamor of the mysterious noises, was the necessity
of taking down the wires in the city streets
and putting them underground
The next problem that faced the young men
of the telephone, as soon as they had escaped from
the clamor of the mysterious noises, was the necessity
of taking down the wires in the city streets
and putting them underground. At first, they
had strung the wires on poles and roof-tops.
They had done this, not because it was cheap,
but because it was the only possible way, so
far as any one knew in that kindergarten period.
A telephone wire required the daintiest of handling.
To bury it was to smother it, to make
it dull or perhaps entirely useless. But now
that the number of wires had swollen from hun-
dreds to thousands, the overhead method had
been outgrown. Some streets in the larger cities
had become black with wires. Poles had risen
to fifty feet in height, then sixty–seventy–
eighty. Finally the highest of all pole lines was
built along West Street, New York–every pole
a towering Norway pine, with its top ninety feet
above the roadway, and carrying thirty cross-
arms and three hundred wires.
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