T e l e g r a p h,   T e l e p h o n e  &  W i r e l e s s:

How Telecom Changed the World

 

Selected quotes

 

This is a small sample; you'll have to check the book to see who said it, and to get the rest!

 

p. 1       

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

 

p. 53     

It is worthy of remark, that more business was done by merchants after the tariff was laid than when the service was gratuitus.

 

p. 208   

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand-fold.

 

p. 221   

The history of the telephone will never be fully written. It is partly hidden away in 20 or 30 thousand pages of testimony and partly lying on the hearts and consciences of a few whose lips are sealed,  -- some in death and others by a golden clasp whose grip is even tighter.

 

p. 213   

The world as yet does not know how much it owes to you, and this generation will never know it. I regard what has been done as the most marvellous thing in human history.

 

p.264    

One of very most useful of all inventions, but rendered almost worthless & a cold and deliberate theft & swindle by the black scoundrelism & selfishness of the companies of chartered robbers who conduct it.

 

p. 403   

Even if I could be Shakespeare, I think I should still choose to be Faraday.

 

p.  455   

The more anything cost the better he liked it. . . He had an utter disregard for money.

 

p. 157   

The lamplight falls on blackened walls,

and streams through narrow perforations;

The long beam trails o'er pasteboard scales,

with slow, decaying oscillations;

Flow, current, flow! Set the quick light spot flying!

Flow, current, answer, light-spot! Flashing, quivering, dying.

 

p. 515   

But if God had not given the right of monopoly to AT&T after the war, the FCC did.  The

commission ignored cost comparisons, and . . . narrowed the ability of other companies to compete. . .

 

p. 521   

If you invent something, that doesn't necessarily help anybody. You've got to get it into the world; you've got to produce.

 

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