head.

Several weeks later, the first two cables for actual use were laid in
Boston and Brooklyn; and in 1883 Engineer J. P. Davis was set to grapple
with the Herculean labor of putting a complete underground system in the
wire-bound city of New York. This he did in spite of a bombardment of
explosions from leaky gas-pipes, and with a woeful lack of experts and
standard materials. All manner of makeshifts had to be tried in place of
tile ducts, which were not known in 1883. Iron pipe was used at first,
then asphalt, concrete, boxes of sand and creosoted wood. As for the
wires, they were first wrapped in cotton, and then twisted into cables,
usually of a hundred wires each. And to prevent the least taint of
moisture, which means sudden death to a telephone current, these cables
were invariably soaked in oil.

This oil-filled type of cable carried the telephone business safely
through half a dozen years. But it was not the final type. It was
preliminary only, the best that could be made at that time. Not one
is in use to-day. In 1888 Theodore Vail set on foot a second series of
experiments, to see if a cable could be made that was better suited as
a highway for the delicate electric currents of the telephone. A young
engineer named John A. Barrett, who had already made his mark as an
expert, by finding a way to twist and transpose the wires, was set apart
to tackle this problem. Being an economical Vermonter, Barrett went to
work in a little wooden shed in the backyard of a Brooklyn foundry. In
this foundry he had seen a unique machine that could be made to mould
hot lead around a rope of twisted wires. This was a notable discovery.
It meant TIGHT COVERINGS. It meant a victory over that most troublesome
of enemies--moisture. Also, it meant that cables could henceforth be
made longer, with fewer sleeves and splices, and without the oil, which
had always been an unmitigated nuisance.

Next, having made the cable tight, Barrett set out to produce it more
cheaply and by accident stumbled upon a way to make it immensely more
efficient. All wires were at that time wrapped with cotton, and his plan
was to find some less costly material that would serve the same purpose.
One of his workmen, a Virginian, suggested the use of paper twine, which
had been used in the South during the Civil War, when cotton was scarce
and expensive. Barrett at once searched the South for paper twine and
found it. He bought a barrel of it from a smal