ted that the boy was a
genius and offered him a job, which he accepted and has held ever
since. Such is the story of the entrance of Charles E. Scribner into the
telephone business, where he has been well-nigh indispensable.

His monumental work has been the development of the MULTIPLE
Switchboard, a much more brain-twisting problem than the building of
the Pyramids or the digging of the Panama Canal. The earlier types of
switchboard had become too cumbersome by 1885. They were well enough for
five hundred wires but not for five thousand. In some exchanges as many
as half a dozen operators were necessary to handle a single call; and
the clamor and confusion were becoming unbearable. Some handier and
quieter way had to be devised, and thus arose the Multiple board. The
first crude idea of such a way had sprung to life in the brain of a
Chicago man named L. B. Firman, in 1879; but he became a farmer and
forsook his invention in its infancy.

In the Multiple board, as it grew up under the hands of Scribner,
the outgoing wires are duplicated so as to be within reach of every
operator. A local call can thus be answered at once by the operator who
receives it; and any operator who is overwhelmed by a sudden rush of
business can be helped by her companions. Every wire that comes into the
board is tasselled out into many ends, and by means of a "busy test,"
invented by Scribner, only one of these ends can be put into use at a
time. The normal limit of such a board is ten thousand wires, and will
always remain so, unless a race of long-armed giantesses should appear,
who would be able to reach over a greater expanse of board. At present,
a business of more than ten thousand lines means a second exchange.

The Multiple board was enormously expensive. It grew more and more
elaborate until it cost one-third of a million dollars. The telephone
men racked their brains to produce something cheaper to take its place,
and they failed. The Multiple boards swallowed up capital as a desert
swallows water, but THEY SAVED TEN SECONDS ON EVERY CALL. This was an
unanswerable argument in their favor, and by 1887 twenty-one of them
were in use.

Since then, the switchboard has had three or four rebuildings. There has
seemed to be no limit to the demands of the public or the fertility
of Scribner's brain. Persistent changes were made in the system of
signalling. The first signal, used by Bell and Watson, was a tap on the
diaphragm with the fi