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The Telephone 161 borator. Moreover, a section of the wire used in the Boston workshop, which Mr. Watson tore down for preservation as an historic memento, was also introduced into the transcontinental line. At the opening of this long-distance wire all records in trunk road conversation were smashed. In addition to talking between New York and San Francisco, Mr. Vail, who was spending a vacation in Florida for the benefit of his health, was switched- in, thus adding a further 1,000 miles to the circuit. President Wilson, seated at his desk in the White House, Washington, also carried on a triangular con- versation with San Francisco, New York, and Florida, while Boston was afterwards linked up. When one recalls that it was only with extreme difficulty that Bell could talk over a wire merely a few feet in length in 1876, the ability to converse over 4,400 miles of wire forty years later offers a striking tes- timony to the development of the invention and the brilliancy of the brains concentrated upon its improvement. Some idea of what such a telephone line as this represents may be gathered from the fact that when two persons are talking between New York and San Francisco they have the exclusive use of an installa- tion which has cost a round £400,000. A telephone differs from a railway line because only two people may use it at one time, whereas several trains, heavily laden with passengers and freight, may use a length of railway simultaneously. Under these circumstances the cost of telephoning across the con- tinent, which is 27s. per minute with a three-minute minimum, cannot be described as excessive. L