Obituary

Henry William Pope, brother of Honorary Secretary Ralph W. Pope and of the late Past-President Franklin L. Pope, died at Bellerose, Long Island, N. Y., February 29, 1916, at the age of sixty-eight. Mr. Pope was born in Great Barrington, Mass., November 2, 1848. He succeeded his brothers as manager of the telegraph office at that place at the age of 14. In 1863 he was transferred to the main office of the American Telegraph Company in New York. After service as an operator in Boston, Mr. Pope became in 1872 chief operator of the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company and in the following year assistant general superintendent of the American District Telegraph Company in New York. From 1876 to 1879 he was general superintendent of the company, and introduced the first telephone ever installed for commercial purposes in New York, the first adaptation of the simultaneous telephone and telegraph principle, and improvised and constructed in 1877 the first telephone hook switch, installed in the office of the Roosevelt organ factory in Eighteenth Street. From 1879 to 1882 Mr. Pope was general superintendent of the New York Bell Telephone Company, and one of the appraisers of the telephone property in New York City, prior to the consolidation of the telephone interests. He organized the first telephone convention, at Niagara Falls. In 1883 he organized the Mutual District Messenger Company of New York. Mr. Pope then engaged in the organizing and constructing of a large number of street railway and electric light plants in different cities, notably the Citizens´ Electric Illuminating Company of Brooklyn, of which he was president — the first company to introduce electric lights in the city of Brooklyn. In 1895 he again identified himself with the telephone interests, serving in various official capacities with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company. In 1900 he was appointed acting general manager of the Bell Tel- phone Company of Buffalo, operating the territory in the western part of the State of New York. In 1904 he became a special agent of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, New York. It was the opinion among telephone men that Mr. Pope had probably done more than any other one telephone official in America to advance the popularity of the telephone with the public at large and with business men. Mr. Pope was the organizer of the Telephone Pioneers of America. He was elected an Associate of the Institute March 23, 1898.