Discussion on “telephone engineering,” at New York, February 23, 1906

Thomas D. Lockwood: In the early years of the telephone exchange, when the telephone engineers of the present time — yes, and the telephone business managers of the present time — were learning their business by hard knocks, we all thought, having no idea of course of what the telephone exchange would grow to, that the greatest and most wonderful feature of telephony was the invention of the telephone itself; and of course in a sense that was so and is so. But when all is said and done, and we have given to the telephone and its inventor all of the credit, honor, and glory to which it and he are unquestionably entitled, I think we should still have enough to spare for the men who have built and perfected the telephone business, who have constructed and perfected the telephone exchange, and who have designed and organized the art of telephone engineering, as expounded in the paper we have just heard.