Theodore Vail Quotes

Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.

In 1907 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company faced a crisis. The patents of its founder, Alexander Graham Bell, had expired, and it seemed in danger of losing its near-monopoly on phone services. Its board summoned back a retired president, Theodore Vail, who decided to reinvigorate the company by committing to a bold goal: building a system that could connect a call between New York and San Francisco. The challenge required combining feats of engineering with leaps of pure science. Making use of vacuum tubes and other new technologies, AT&T built repeaters and amplifying devices that accomplished the task in January 1915. On the historic first transcontinental call, in addition to Vail and President Woodrow Wilson, was Bell himself, who echoed his famous words from thirty-nine years earlier, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” This time his former assistant Thomas Watson, who was in San Francisco, replied, “It would take me a week.”1

As mentioned earlier, after founding what became Bell Labs, Theodore Vail said that no group “can be either ignored or favored at the expense of the others without unbalancing the whole.” Vannevar Bush, during the Second World War, took every chance he could to emphasize his respect for the military, even as he spent nearly all his time with scientists like himself. Loving your loonshot and franchise groups equally, however, requires overcoming natural preferences. Artists tend to favor artists. Soldiers tend to favor soldiers.