This is a classic example of what happened to most of the telephones of the early days when they were taken out of service. These "Dean" desk and wall sets were thrown in a well by the Pacific Telephone Company in Jacksonville, Oregon sometime around the turn of the century. Stories have been told about how telephones were burned, buried, crushed, thrown off the end of piers and destroyed in many other diabolical ways. This is precisely why they are so hard to find today. The inventor of the telephone in 1892, opens long-distance service between New York and Chicago over 800 miles of open wire line. Only 14 years before, in 1878, he had predicted that some day "a man in one part of the country may communicate by word of mouth with another in a distant place." Today all New York-Chicago connections are in underground cable, also forecast by Bell. The man with full beard is John E. Hudson, then President of the Bell Telephone Company. Note the Cabinet Desk Set that Dr. Bell is using. Little did Dr. Bell know that in the future there would actually beinternational phone service.