Discussion on “traffic studies in automatic-switchboard telephone systems” (Campbell) and “a comparison of the telegraph with the telephone as a means of communication in steam railroad operation” (Clapp), New York, March 13, 1

William Maver, Jr.: I think it may be safely stated that if the telephone had been invented before the telegraph, and had been in use on railroads for train dispatching and the transmission of messages, up to the limit of distance of which it is capable, there would have been very little disposition on the part of railroad managers to displace the telephone by the telegraph, but when the telephone appeared the telegraph was well established on railroads, and its small cost and simplicity have served to give it the stability in railroad service that it has acquired.