in a very interesting and gratifying way.

By reason of improvements in methods of line construction and
apparatus arrangement, the radius of communication steadily has
increased. Commercial speech now is possible between points several
thousand miles apart, and there is no theoretical reason why
communication might not be established between any two points on the
earth's surface. The practical reasons of demand and cost may prevent
so great an accomplishment as talking half around the earth. So far
as science is concerned there would seem to be no reason why this
might not be done today, by the careful application of what already is
known.

In the United States, telephone service from its beginning has been
supplied to users by private enterprise. In other countries, it is
supplied by means of governmentally-owned equipment. In general, it
may be said that the adequacy and the amount, as well as the quality
of telephone service, is best in countries where the service is
provided by private enterprise.

Telephone systems in the United States were under the control of the
Bell Telephone Company from the invention of the device in 1876 until
1893. The fundamental telephone patent expired in 1893. This opened
the telephone art to the general public, because it no longer was
necessary to secure telephones solely from the patent-holding company
nor to pay royalty for the right to use them, if secured at all.
Manufacturers of electrical apparatus generally then began to make and
sell telephones and telephone apparatus, and operating companies, also
independent of the Bell organization, began to install and use
telephones. At the end of seventeen years of patent monopoly in the