Charles Jasper Glidden was born on August 29, 1857, at Lowell, Massachusets. He was the son of Nathaniel Ames and Laura Ellen (Clark) Glidden.
He was descended from Charles Glidden who came to Boston from Bideford, Devon, about 1660 and moved to New Hampshire in 1664.
At fifteen, the boy entered the employ of the Northern Telegraph Company at Lowell as a telegraph messenger boy, then after a brief service with the Franklin Telegraph Company at Springfield, Massachusets, he became manager of this company’s office at Manchester, New Hampshire.
He also served as New Hampshire correspondent for Boston newspapers and acquired a wide acquaintance in northern New England. When the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company was organized in 1873, Glidden was appointed its manager at Manchester, a position which he held until 1877.
In the preceding year, he had directed for Alexander Graham Bell over the Manchester-Boston telegraph lines a successful test of the possibility of long-distance telephony. That experiment determined his career.
Having installed several private telephone lines at Manchester, Glidden in 1877 suggested to the Bell Company the project of organizing at Lowell a telephone exchange system. It was agreed that if fifty subscribers could be secured the exchange might start. Glidden energetically canvassed the city for the first telephone exchange list to be compiled anywhere.
The exchange thus organized was sold in 1879 to a syndicate composed of Glidden, William A. Ingham, and others who obtained the exclusive right to use the telephone in Lowell and the surrounding towns.
Under the style of the Lowell District Telephone Company they installed one of the first multiple switchboards, and though it was a crude device compared with the central energy boards of a later day, the company gave generally satisfactory service.
In this primitive exchange, much of the technique of telephone traffic was developed under Glidden’s supervision. It was his discovery that girls’ voices carry better than men’s over the wires, which led to the use of women as telephone operators.
Following the successful installation of the telephone system at Lowell, Glidden, Ingham, and their associates opened exchanges in 1879 at Fitchburg and Worcester. In the next year, they established systems at several places in New Hampshire and Maine.
Their Massachusetts companies outside of Boston were the nucleus from which the present New England Telephone & Telegraph Company was created.
In 1883, the syndicate, of which Glidden was secretary and principal executive, extended its operations into Ohio, Minnesota, Arkansas, Texas, and other states under the firm-name of the Erie Telephone & Telegraph Company.
The main offices continued to be at Lowell. Early in the twentieth century, the Erie telephone companies were sold to the Bell organization on terms advantageous to the Lowell group.
Glidden found himself with leisure and means to devote the rest of his life to motoring and aviation, in which, successively, he became interested. The family home was removed, in 1902, to Brookline, Massachusetts, whence Glidden organized the first round-the-world motor tour, covering 46, 528 miles in 39 countries, in many of which an automobile had not been seen before.
In 1905, he established the Glidden trophy for the American Automobile Association, which became the chief touring trophy in the United States. The newspaper and magazine descriptions of his own journeyings were terse and matter-of-fact.
They also reveal one of the secrets of his success in business and pleasure-seeking - his meticulously careful provision against accidents and emergencies. In aeronautics, he was equally active. Before the commercial future of the airplane was assured he made forty-six balloon ascensions and was prominently associated with the early air meets at Squantum, Massachusets.
His “Aerial Navigation Company, ” chartered to operate airships between Boston and New York, was based on premature expectations, but during the World War a sudden development of aviation seemed to justify Glidden in hoping to “see airplanes used in an individual capacity as commonly as are motorcycles now”.
He served in the aviation section of the Signal Officers’ Reserve Corps from 1917 to 1919, was president of the World’s Board of Aeronautical Commissioners, incorporated in 1921, and edited the Aeronautical Digest from October 1921 to February 1924.
Death, due to cancer, interrupted his ambitious plans for further participation in aviatorial technique and finance.
Glidden funded the construction of telephone lines in Manchester, New Hampshire and was the first to recognize that the female voice was more suitable for the early telephones than the male. The telephone exchange, which he had initiated, grew to a syndicate, which, amongst others, covered the U. S. states of Ohio, Minnesota, Arkansas, and Texas. The first long-distance telephone connection was established on his initiative. Charles Glidden and his wife were the first to circle the world in an automobile.
Glidden's integrity and his direct, forceful personality brought him respect and popularity even while he was known to be a hard bargainer, alert to guard his personal interests.
Glidden had married, July 10, 1878, Lucy Emma Cleworth, of Manchester.
