In the year 1878 the American businessman first became hitched to the telephone. Not that the telephone was new that year. The businessman had come to know it as an instrument for talking at some distance by means of a pair of telephones connected with telegraph wires or wires put up for that purpose. He could, for instance, lease such a pair of phones for $12 a year from the Bell Telephone Company of Boston. But such use of the new instrument was limited.