The History of the Telephone

achine-shop that stood in one of the narrow streets of Boston, not far from Scollay Square. It was a very hot afternoon in June, but the young professor had forgotten the heat and the grime of

en toiling over it for three years and it had constantly baffled him, until, on this hot afterno

me so suddenly as to give him the sensation of surprise. His eyes blazed with delight, and he sprang

ctric wire. Watson had snapped the reed on one of the machines and the professor had heard from the other machine exactly the same sound. It was no more than the gentle TWANG of a clock-sp

d happily heard by a man whose ear had been trained to recognize the strange voice of the little newcomer. There, amidst flying

ge of both subjects upon the problem of the telephone. To other men that exceedingly faint sound would have been as inaudible as silence itself; but to Bell it was a thunder-clap. It was a dream come true. It was an impossible thing which had in a flash become so easy that he could scarcely believe it. Here, without th

rch. Already, for half a year or longer, Bell had known the correct theory of the telephone; but he had not realized that the feeble undulatory curre

he correction of stammering and similar defects of speech. The second, Alexander Melville Bell, was the dean of British elocutionists, a man of creative brain and a most impressive facility of rhetoric. He was the author of a dozen text-books on the art of speaking correctly, and also of a most ingenious sign-language which he called "Visible Speech." Every letter in the alphabet of this language represented a certain action of the lips and tongue; so that a new method was provide

nd in London; and had in one way and another picked up a smattering of anatomy, music, electricity, and telegraphy. Until he was sixteen years of age, he had read nothing but novels and poetry and romantic tales of Scottish heroes. Then he left home to become a teacher of elocution in various British sc

of the physical sciences. So it happened that when Bell ran to Ellis as a young enthusiast and told his experiments, Ellis informed him that Helmholtz had done the same things several years before and done them more completely. He brought

tractive. It appealed at once to him as a student of speech. If a tuning-fork could be made to sing by a magnet or an electrified wire, why would it not be possible to make a musical telegraph-a telegraph with a piano key-board, so that many messages could be

scientist, and treated Bell with the utmost kindness. He showed him an ingenious talking-machine that had been made by Baron de Kempelin. At this time Bell was twenty-two and unknown; Wheatstone was sixty-seve

it had put its mark upon the young inventor himself. Nothing but a change of climate, said his doctor, would put him out of danger. And so, to save his life, he and his father and mother set sail from Glas

curly tangle. In temperament he was a true scientific Bohemian, with the ideals of a savant and the disposition of an artist. He was wholly a man of enthusiasms, more devoted to ideas than to people; and less likely to master his own thoughts than to be mastered by them. He had no shrewdness,

eech" characters. While he was living in London his most absorbing enthusiasm was the instruction of a class of deaf-mutes, who could be trained to talk, he believed, by means of the "Visible Speech" alphabet. He was so deeply impressed by

d Graham's exploits with a class of deaf-mutes; and soon afterward the Boston Board of Education wrote to Graham, offering him five hundred dollars if he would come to Boston and introduce his system of

University; and brought so many pupils around him that he ventured to open an ambitious "School of Vocal Physiology," which became at once a profitable enterprise. For a time there seemed to be little hope of his escaping fro

nd as the child lived with his grandmother in the city of Salem, sixteen miles from Boston, it was agreed that Bell should make his home with the Sanders family. He

family was allowed to enter it, as Bell was nervously afraid of having his ideas stolen. He would even go to five or six stores to buy his supplies, for fear that his intentions should be dis

e cellar, he would rush wildly to the barn and begin to send me signals along his experimental wires. If I noticed any improvement in his machine, he would be delighted. He would

ell, in his ardent and headlong way, lost his heart to her completely; and four years later, he had the happiness of making her his wife. Mabel Hubbard did much to encourage Bell. She followed each step of his progress with the keenest interest. She wrote his letters and c

o. "Do you know," he said to Hubbard, "that if I sing the note G close to the strings of the piano, that the G-string will answer me?" "Well, what then?" asked Hubbard. "It is a fact of tremend

scorn. "Now you are talking nonsense," he said. "Such a thing never could be more than a scientific toy. You had better thro

an voice. "If I can make a deaf-mute talk," he said, "I can make iron talk." For months he wavered between the two ideas. He had no more than the most hazy conception of what this voice-carrying mac

king experiments with two remarkable machines-the phonautograph and the manometric capsule, by means of which the vibrations of sound were made plainly visible. If these could be im-proved, he thought, then the deaf might be

together with the ear-drum and the associated bones. Bell took this fragment of a skull and arranged it so that a straw touched the ear-drum at one end

the gruesome joy of this young professor with the pale face and the black eyes, who stood earnestly singing, whispering, and shouting into a dead man's ear? What sort of a wizard must he be, or g

disc might vibrate an iron rod, or at least, an iron wire." In a flash the conception of a membrane telephone was pictured in his mind. He saw in imagination two iron discs, or ear-drums, far apart and connected by an electrified wire, catching the vibrations of sound at one

denied, as one of them was his best-paying patron and the other was the father of the girl whom he hoped to marry. "If you wish my daughter," said Hubbard, "you must abandon your foolish telephone." Bell's "School of Vocal Physiology," too, from which he had hoped so much, had come to an inglorious end. He had been too much absorbed in his experiments to sustain it. His professorship had been given up, and he had no pupils except Georgie San

of a return ticket from Sanders and arranged to stay with a friend in Washington, to save a hotel bill that he could not afford. At that time Professor Joseph Henry, who knew mo

Henry had worked over the telegraph before Bell was born. Henry was now a veteran of seventy-eight, with only three years remaining to his credit in the bank of Time

nvention," said Henry, "and I would advise you

e not got the electrical kn

ponded the ag

o his parents. "I live too much in an atmosphere of discouragement for scientific pursuits; and such a chimerical ide

edrooms. The rent of the workshop and bedrooms, and Watson's wages of nine dollars a week, were being paid by Sanders and Hubbard. Consequently, when Bell returned from Washington, he was compelled by his agreement to devote himself mainly to the musical telegraph, although his h

classes, his poverty. He threw aside a profession in which he was already locally famous. And he grappled with this new mystery of electricity, as Henry had advised him to do, encou

scs had to be tried, some smaller and thinner than a dime and others of steel boiler-plate as heavy as the shield of Achilles. In all the books of electrical science, there was nothing to help Bell and Watson in this journey they were

n gasp and make strange inarticulate noises. Its educators had not learned

asement, dropped the receiver and rushed with wild joy up three flights of stairs to tell t

amiliar with its odd little voice. Usually Watson, who had a remarkably keen sense of hearing, did the listening; and Bell, who was a profess

w that there was no name for it in any of the world's languages. In describing it to the officials of the Patent Office, he was obliged to call it "an improvement in tel

stics and electricity. His study of "Visible Speech" had trained his mind so that he could mentally SEE the shape of a word as he spoke it. He knew what a spoken word was, and how it acted upon the air, or the ether, that carried its vibrations from

, "I would never have invented the telephone." What he had done was so amazing, so foolhardy, that no trained electrician could have thought of it. It was "the very hardihood o

er the telephone had learned to talk. Here was a superb opportunity to let the wide world know what had been done, and fortunately Hubbard was one of the Centennial Commissioners. B

nd the expense of his experiments. For his three or four years of inventing he had received nothing as yet-nothing but his patent. In order

d and pleaded, without effect. Then, as the train was starting, leaving Bell on the platform, the affectionate young girl could no longer control her feelings and was overcome by a passion of tears. At this the susceptible Bell, like a true Si

e judges were to make a special tour of inspection, and Mr. Hubbard, after much trouble, had obtained a promise that they would spend a few minut

and the marvellous exhibit of printing telegraphs shown by the Western Union Company. By the time they came to Bell's table, through a litter of school-desks and blackboards, the hour was seven o'clock, and every man in the party was hot, tired, and hungry. Several announced their intention of returning to their ho

and the hunger. Who was this young inventor, with the pale complexion and black eyes, that he should be the friend of Emperors? They did not know, and for the moment even Bell himself had forgotten, that Dom Pedro had once visited Bell's class of deaf-mutes at Boston University. He was especially interested in such human

eiver and placed it to his ear. It was a moment of tense expectancy. No one knew clearly what was about to happen, when the Emp

ed to listen, and, as one of the bystanders afterwards said, no one could forget the look of awe that came into his face as he heard that iron di

Cable. He listened and learned what even he had not known before, that a solid metallic body could take up from the air all the countless varieties of vibrations produced by speech, and that these vibrations could be car

e masters of electrical magic, this instrument was as surprising as it was to the man in the street. And both were noble enough to admit frankly their astonishment in the reports which they made as judges, when they gave Bell a Certificate of Award. "M

nd forth between the two ends of the wire like a pair of delighted children. And thus it happened that the crude little instrument that had been tossed into an out-of-the-way corner became the star of the Centennial. It had been given no more than eighteen words in the official catalogu