WITH MEN WHO DO THINGS
BY A. RUSSELL BOND
Author of “The Scientific American Boy” and “Handyman’s Workshop and Laboratory”
Chapter XIV
THOUSANDS TALKING AT ONCE
Tunneling a city street is no simple task under any conditions. There were sewer-pipes, gas-pipes, water-pipes, electric light and power conduits, telephone, telegraph, and fire-alarm conduits, and the conduits for the underground trolley system of the electric cars, to be avoided. The gas-mains were elevated above the streets so that there would be no danger of an explosion, should they develop a leak, Of course, the man-holes or underground chambers, where connections were made with the telephone-lines, had to be torn away, exposing the lead-sheathed telephone cables. To protect these cables from the picks and shovels of careless laborers, they were wrapped thickly with burlap.
A telephone lineman was down under the planking one morning, making some new cable connections. He was pouring hot, melted paraffin on the splice to drive out all moisture before covering it with lead, when some of the oil spattered over on his fire. Before he knew it, there was a lively blaze, which caught the burlap, melted the lead off the cables, and consumed the insulation of the copper wires within, Choking with smoke and the fumes of burning insulation, the lineman staggered out of the tunnel, yelling “Fire.” By the time the engines came up, the planking was burning briskly, and the firemen had their troubles getting this queer blaze under control.
The fire was all out when Will and I arrived on the scene. Pushing his way through the crowd as if he had the right, Will led the way to the opening in the planking, and disappeared quickly down a ladder, I ran down after him into the charred subway. It took several moments to adjust my eyes to the twilight below, and then the sight that met them was appalling. There were thousands and thousands of copper wires burned, torn, and fused together, and matted with splashes of lead, all mixed up in the worst snarl imaginable. How could such a tangle ever be straightened out? Did we but know it, hundreds of subscribers, at that very moment, were frantically rattling their receiver hooks, shouting for “central,” threatening to report these stupid telephone operators, and sending by messenger to have their “pesky ‘phones” attended to.
Already there was a force of men at work trying to repair the damage. First they cut away the snarls, and then they tested each pair of wires individually. A telephone circuit always consists of two wires twisted together, and so it was easy to tell which two wires belonged to each other. Nevertheless, it was important to test each wire of a pair, to make sure that it was electrically sound. In order to identify the pairs at the central station, a wire of a certain number would be grounded, and then the repairman, with a telegraph battery and relay connected to ground, would search through the wires until he found one which would make his telegraph instrument click. Then he would secure that wire in an index board, sticking it through a hole labeled with the number of the wire.
We watched this numbering process for a time, but soon grew tired. It was so monotonous and so hopelessly slow. The men thought so themselves, evidently, because, after a time, the order came to connect up the wires in any way possible, and they would be straightened out at the central station. There the cables would be cut again and the lines sorted out.
After we had been there some time, and were starting off to get lunch, I noticed that a man was watching us rather curiously.
“Hello,” he said; “what are you doing down here?”
“Just looking on,” I answered. “There was n’t anybody to stop us, so we came on down.”
“Well, I venture to say you never saw a sight like this before. I am sure I never did in all my telephone experience. Seven thousand wires all matted like wool! Not all telephone wires, either. We are in a general mixup with the telegraph and fire-alarm circuits, too.”
“I suppose this cripples the whole city,” ventured Will,
“The whole city? Ha, ha, ha! The whole city, did you say? There are five hundred thousand telephones here in this city, You just look