BELL CENTENNIAL Progress in Telephone Service Related WNU Features. "The proprietors of the telephone, tele-phone, the invention of Alexander Alexan-der Graham Bell, for which patents pat-ents have been issued by the United States and Great Britain, are now prepared to furnish telephones tele-phones for the transmission of articulate speech throngh instruments in-struments not more than 20 miles apart. Conversation can be easily carried on after slight practice and with the occasional repetition of a word or sentence. sen-tence. On first listening to the telephone, though the sound is perfectly audible, the articulation articula-tion seems to be indistinct; but after a few trials the ear becomes be-comes accustomed to the peculiar pecu-liar sound and finds little difficulty dif-ficulty in understanding the words." That picture of the telephone, as depicted in the first telephone advertisement ad-vertisement of May, 1877, represents a marked contrast to the instrument of today. The advertisement is recalled in connection with the observance of the 100th anniversary of the birth, of Alexander Graham Bell, inventor F i ,. ! i I - ' ' - ! i A i ( ' " , j RECOGNIZE THIS? . . . This scene of a pioneer rural home shows what the farm telephone looked like in 1914. Long recognized as a boon to farm areas, telephone service will be extended and improved throughout rural United States during the postwar period. of the telephone, on March 3, "1847. Although born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Scot-land, Bell was an American by choice, coming to Boston at the age of 24 to teach the use of "visible speech," developed by his father for training the deaf to speak. A deep and scientific interest in the mechanics of speech, an inventive inven-tive streak and the challenge of making the telegraph "talk" led to his experiments which produced the telephone. On June 2, 1875, he first succeeded in transmitting sound over a wire and one of his experimental experi-mental telephones transmitted the .first complete sentence on March 10, 1876, just a week after his 29th ' birthday anniversary. In addition to being a great scientist, sci-entist, Bell was a man of remarkable remark-able vision, which led him only two years after the telephone was invented in-vented to foresee the day "when a man in one part of the country may communicate by word of mouth with another in a distant place." j The fulfillment of that prediction ' has revolutionized communications in the United States and throughout the world. Progress has continued ; uninterruptedly ever since Bell created cre-ated the telephone. In the United States alone, there are now more than 32 million telephones in use, more than double the number in 1940. Since V-J Day four and a half million mil-lion instruments have been installed. A major phase of the telephone company's postwar program is to extend and improve farm telephone service. The telephone, it is pointed point-ed out, always has been the farmer's farm-er's "good friend and loyal assistant" assist-ant" in business, in time of sickness sick-ness or emergency, or as a means of keeping in touch with relatives and friends. These benefits will be extended to more rural families under the 100 million dollar rural expansion program pro-gram with its objective of a million more farm telephones.