You must go to Chicago, where telegraphic apparatus is made." The boy gladly took his advice and went to the Western Electric factory in Chicago.

Here he accidentally met Enos M.Barton, the head of the factory.

Barton noted that the boy was a genius and offered him a job, which he accepted and has held ever since.

Such is the story of the entrance of Charles E.Scribner into the telephone business, where he has been well-nigh indispensable.
His monumental work has been the development of the MULTIPLE Switchboard, a much more brain-twisting problem than the building of the Pyramids or the digging of the Panama Canal.

The earlier types of switchboard had become too cumbersome by 1885.