[3][5][6] He was a fruitful inventor of many items run by electricity and was able to turn them into successful business enterprises.

[1] Cheever became acquainted with Bell when his invention of the telephone was in its infancy and considered nothing but a novelty item.

Cheever then experimented with a telephone line from his office in the Tribune Building with one to the American Institute Fair to demonstrate commercial usage.

He showed the quality of the sound traveling on telephone lines to be good by demonstrating the playing of the band at the Fair reproduced at his office.

[1] Cheever organized and formed the Telephone Company of New York with Hilborne Lewis Roosevelt as his business partner using a capital of about $20,000 (equivalent to $572,000 in 2023) to start the enterprise on August 31, 1877.

The Cheever firm went out of business within a year and it was followed in 1878 with the Bell Company of New York that had 900 paying customers by August 1879.

[16] Cheever formulated a practical way of communicating telegraph messages from moving trains through induction telegraphy.

[21] Cheever retired from business in 1897 and died on May 2, 1900, in Far Rockaway after suffering heart failure brought on by an attack of the grip.