Vail
Vail names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Vail THEODORE NEWTON, an American capitalist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
THEODORE NEWTON, an American capitalist; born in Carroll co., Ohio, in 1845. He was educated at Morristown (N. J.) Academy. After studying medicine for 2 years he became in 1873 assistant superintendent of railway mail service at Washington, assistant general superintendent dent in 1874 and general superintendent in 1875. From 1878 to 1887 he was in the telephone business. After traveling for some years he took up farming in Vermont in 1893, and in 1896 became interested in electrical enterprises in Argentina, introduc- THEODORE N. VAIL ing an electrical street railway system in Buenos Aires and installing telephone systems in the principal Argentine cities. In 1907 he became president of the American Telegraph and Telephone Company, serving in this capacity until he died on April 15, 1920. He was an officer and director in many corporations in the United States and England, and was a member of many scientific and other societies. He received honorary degrees from Dartmouth, Middelbury College, Princeton, Harvard and the University of Vermont.
Vail ALFRED, an American inventor
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ALFRED, an American inventor; born in Morristown, N. J., Sept. 25, 1807; was graduated at the University of the City of New York in 1836, and in 1837 became associated with Samuel F. B. Morse in his experiments for the purpose of perfecting a scheme of telegraphy. His mechanical knowledge applied to the experimental apparatus resulted in the first available Morse machine. He invented the combination of the horizontal-lever motion to actuate the style; devised the alphabet of dots, spaces and dashes which it necessitated; and in 1844 constructed the automatic lever and grooved roller which embossed on paper the characters which he originated. He was appointed assistant superintendent of the telegraph line constructed between Baltimore and Washington in 1843, and on the completion of the system, in 1844, was stationed at Baltimore, where he invented the finger key and received the first message from Washington. He died in Morristown, N. J., Jan. 18, 1859.
Vail CHARLES H., an American clergyman
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CHARLES H., an American clergyman; born in Tully, N. Y., April 28, 1866; was graduated at St. Lawrence University in 1892; studied theology and was ordained in the Universalist Church; was pastor of All Souls' Church, Albany, N. Y., in 1893-1894. In he accept the latter year accepted the pastorate of the First Universalist Church in Jersey City. In 1901 he was an unsuccessful candidate for governor of New Jersey on the Social Democratic ticket. His publications include: "Modern Socialism" (1897); "National Ownership of Railways" (1897); "Scientific Socialism" (1899); "The Industrial Evolution" (1899); "Mission of the Working Class" 、(1900); “Socialism: What It Is and What It Is Not" (1900); "The Socialist Movement" (1901); "The Trust Question" (1901); "Militant and Triumphant Socialism" (1913); etc.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote in 1921 that Theodore N. Vail had led the American Telephone and Telegraph Company from 1907 until his death the year before, it was describing a firm he had deliberately built into a regulated national monopoly under the slogan "One Policy, One System, Universal Service." That monopoly lasted until 1984, when a federal antitrust settlement broke AT&T into seven regional "Baby Bells"; the surviving long-distance company was itself bought in 2005 by SBC, one of its own offspring, which then took the AT&T name. Collier's account of Alfred Vail is unusually generous for its date in crediting him with the dot-and-dash alphabet and the lever apparatus, and later historians have largely agreed that his mechanical contributions were greater than the name "Morse code" suggests. Charles H. Vail's Socialist campaign literature, briskly current in 1921, is now read as a document of a movement that peaked with Eugene Debs before the First World War and never recovered.
Written for this edition, 2026.