M. Grace Fickett

Late one June afternoon Arthur Burton was leaning against a table in the eastern gallery of the main hall at the Philadelphia Exposition. It had been a wonderful day, but it was past dinner time, and he was hot, tired, and hungry. He had seen more wonders that day than he had witnessed in all his life before; but now his uncle and the other judges were in the midst of the Massachusetts educational exhibit, which wasn't half so interesting as the first electric light, or the first grain reaper, or the iceboats. So Arthur had moved away from the new-fashioned school desks and the slate blackboards, and was waiting rather wearily.

Suddenly he straightened up. Entering the door near by was the most distinguished visitor at the Centennial, the tall, handsome Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, with the Empress and a bevy of courtiers. To Arthur's amazement, His Majesty walked directly up to the table against which he himself was standing; and looking beyond the little boy, he said with outstretched hand and a pleasant smile:

"How do you do, Mr. Bell? I am very glad to see you and your work."

Till then Arthur had scarcely noticed a sallow, dark-haired young man who had been sitting behind the little table, nor had he paid the slightest attention to some pieces of wood and iron with wire attached lying on the table. But now, the young man and his material had become decidedly interesting.

Dom Pedro II

Dom Pedro II

"I remember very pleasantly," continued Dom Pedro, "my visit to your class in Boston University when you were teaching deaf mutes to speak by means of visible speech. You were working out a new method, I remember. I suppose this is apparatus that you have devised in that connection."

"I thank Your Majesty," stammered the surprised young man, who for a moment had been at a loss to recall who his royal visitor might be. "I shall be delighted to explain my apparatus. But it has nothing to do with teaching deaf mutes to speak. It is more wonderful than that. It speaks itself; that is, it reproduces sounds. It is the improvement on the telegraph that the world has awaited for years.

"You see, I found in my experiments that I could transmit spoken words by electric current through a telegraph wire so that those words could be reproduced by vibrations at the other end of the wire. I suppose my invention might be called a speaking telegraph."

By this time all the judges had joined the Emperor's party. Arthur fell back to his uncle's side, but he could still hear and see everything.

"Now, Your Majesty," continued Mr. Bell, "if you will press your ear against the lid of this iron box, I think in a moment you will have a surprise."

At these words, Mr. Bell's assistant, who had come up to the group during the conversation, went to another table several rods away and quite out of hearing. The Emperor bent down expectantly. The judges looked rather incredulous, but they were all interested.

"Is the man that went off going to talk over the wire so that the Emperor can hear?" whispered Arthur to his uncle.

"Mr. Bell says so," was the reply, "but we shall see."

Suddenly the Emperor gave a start, and a look of utter amazement came over his face.

"It talks! It talks!" he exclaimed excitedly.

It was quite true. Mr. Hubbard, Mr. Bell's assistant, had spoken in a low voice at the other end of the wire and his exact words had been reproduced. The Emperor's excitement was contagious. Everybody forgot how hot and hungry he was. One after another of the judges listened at the magic box to hear Mr. Hubbard or another of their number speak into the instrument at the other end.

"Oh, Uncle, do you suppose I can listen too after a while?" inquired Arthur, when he could no longer keep still.

Just then Mr. Bell himself interposed.

"Now it must be the little boy's turn."

The grateful little boy was not slow in stooping over to the receiver.

"What does he say, Arthur?" asked his uncle.

"Why, he says, 'To be or not to be,' whatever that means."

"You don't know your Hamlet very well yet, little boy."

"But I have heard a speaking telegraph, and that is better," replied Arthur.

By this time Mr. Hubbard was returning with the apparatus he had been using at the other end. It was time to see how the marvel had been wrought.

"Now tell us how it works, Mr. Bell," commanded Dom Pedro.

"It is very simple," Mr. Bell explained. "You know, of course, that for some years it has been possible to transmit articulate speech through India rubber tubes and stringed instruments for short distances; but I worked, as you see, to transmit spoken words by electric current through a telegraph wire.

"Here on the table before you is the instrument I call the transmitter, into which Mr. Hubbard spoke. This projecting part is only a mouth-piece. Inside is a piece of thin iron attached to a membrane, and this piece of iron vibrates whenever one speaks into the transmitter. For you know, gentlemen, that if you hold a piece of paper in front of your mouth and then sing or talk, the paper will vibrate as many times as the air does.

"Now, of course, if I could reproduce those sound or air waves at a distance, a person listening would hear the same sounds that caused the first vibration. I have accomplished that by making and breaking an electric current between two pieces of sheet iron. My assistant spoke into the cone-shaped mouth-piece. At the end of it, as you could see if I took off the cover, is the first thin plate of sheet iron. Near that iron, but not touching it, is a magnetized piece of iron wound around with a coil of wire.

Bell's Telephone in March, 1876.

"This magnet is connected by this wire with another magnet that also has a coil of wire around it. On the other side of the second magnet is the other thin plate of sheet iron. This last part makes what I call the receiver. It is the part at which you listened. It looks, you see, like a metallic pill box with a flat disc for a cover, fastened down at one side and tilted up on another. When you put your ear to that, you heard the reproduction of the original sound."

"Marvelous!" "Wonderful!" "Stupendous!" "Incredible!" were some of the exclamations.

"But, gentlemen," confirmed one of the judges, a man named Elisha Gray, "it is perfectly true. I myself have an invention of a similar sort, by which I can send musical sounds along a telegraph wire."

There was a moment of amazement and congratulation for Mr. Gray. Then came a question addressed to Mr. Bell.

"Could you talk into the iron box and hear at the transmitter?"

"Yes, but not easily. So far I have had to use different instruments at each end of the circuit. I shall remedy that some day," continued Mr. Bell, confidently.

"I am sure you will," agreed the questioner. "We want to see this again, sir," spoke one of the group. "May it not be transferred to the Judges' Hall?"

"Certainly, as far as I am concerned," was the reply. "Mr. Hubbard will see to that, I am sure. I myself must return to Boston to-night."

"My young friend," now spoke Sir William Thomson (who later became Lord Kelvin), perhaps the most noted of all the scientists present, "is it not possible to arrange for a test with your apparatus over a considerable distance? If so, I shall be glad to go to Boston also to witness such an experiment."

"I shall be most delighted, Sir William," answered Bell. "I will make the necessary arrangements and telegraph you at once."

After more congratulations for the young inventor, the group dispersed, the judges going away to the dinner they had for a while forgotten. But during the meal and through the evening they talked of little but the new invention; and Arthur distinctly remembers to this day the enthusiastic remark of Sir William Thomson: "What yesterday I should have declared impossible I have to-day seen realized. The speaking telegraph is the most wonderful thing I have seen in America."

PART II

When Arthur went back to his home in one of the country towns of Massachusetts, he had many things to tell his family and his friends. To him the Exposition had been a veritable fairy land. But the most wonderful genie there was Electricity, and his most remarkable work was the speaking telegraph.

"And you could really hear through that wire?" questioned more than one incredulous person.

"I really could, and as plainly as I hear you," insisted Arthur.

"Sho, now!" remonstrated a farmer neighbor, "you only thought you could."

"Well, maybe," commented another, cautiously, "but of course there was a hole in the wire that you didn't see."

Arthur's own family were more thoughtful and intelligent people.

"I knew," said Grandfather, "that the marvels of electricity were not all understood. When I was a young man, the telegraph was the greatest wonder the world owned. But using that was somehow like talking at arm's length; the telephone brings your friend almost beside you."

"To me," said Arthur's mother, "the telephone, in comparison with the telegraph, seems like a highly finished oil painting. The old invention is like a page of black and white print."

"Why, I have seen Mr. Bell," remembered Arthur's older sister, who was studying to be a teacher, after she had heard the story. "He came to the normal school last year to explain his system of teaching deaf mutes to speak."

The Burtons heard no more of the telephone for six months or more; but the next winter, when Herbert, the older brother, came home from Tufts College to spend a week end, he exclaimed:

"Well, Arthur, I've talked through a telephone, too!"

"You have!"

"Where?"

"Tell us about it!" were the quick replies.

"Professor Dolbear, the physics instructor, has made one in his laboratory. It's a little different from Professor Bell's. Your professor, Arthur, had a battery, you know, to make the electro-magnet. My professor has a permanent magnet instead."

Early in February Herbert came home with more news and an invitation: "Professor Bell is going to give a public lecture and exhibition of his telephone at Salem next Monday evening. He expects to carry on a conversation with people in Boston. Want to go back to college with me Monday morning, Arthur, and go down to Salem in the evening?"

So it happened that on Monday evening, February 12, 1877, Arthur and Herbert, with about five hundred others, were at Lyceum Hall in Salem. It was an eager audience, full of curiosity.

Upon the platform and well toward the front was a small table, on the top of which rested an unimportant-looking covered box. From this box wires extended above to the gas fixture and out through the hall. At the back of the platform was a blackboard on a frame, and at the side a young woman, an expert telegrapher, who was to help Mr. Bell.

"Rather an unpromising set of apparatus!" Arthur heard a man behind him whisper to his neighbor.

"I'm not expecting much," returned the neighbor. "They say Professor Bell's going to talk to Boston. That's nonsense!"

But just then Professor Bell began. He briefly explained the instrument upon the table, which, Arthur saw, varied but little from that at Philadelphia.

"Only," thought Arthur, "he uses it now as he said he should, for transmitting and receiving too."

Then Professor Bell gave a brief account of the studies he had made since 1872, when he came to Boston to teach speech to deaf mutes.

"I made up my mind," said he, "that if I could make a deaf mute talk, I could make iron talk. For two years I worked on the problem, but unsuccessfully. At last, about two years ago, while a friend and I were experimenting daily with a wire stretched between my own room at Boston University and the basement of an adjoining building, I spoke into the transmitter, 'Can you hear me?' To my surprise and delight the answer came at once, 'I can understand you perfectly.' To be sure," continued the lecturer, "the sounds were not perfect, but they were intelligible. I had transmitted articulate speech.

"My problem was a long way toward its solution. With practically those same instruments, improved with a year's experimenting, I went to the Exposition, where, as you know, I interested many people. Since last June Sir William Thomson and I have succeeded in talking over a distance of about sixty miles. Moreover, I have talked, but not so successfully, between New York and Boston, a distance of over two hundred miles. To-night I expect to establish a connection between this hall and my study in Exeter Place in Boston, eighteen miles away. My colleague, Professor Watson, is there, in company with six other gentlemen."

Then, in an ordinary tone, as if speaking to some one a few feet away, Professor Bell inquired, talking into the transmitter:

"Are you ready, Watson?"

Evidently Watson was ready, for there came from the telephone a noise much like the sound of a horn.

"That is Watson making and breaking the circuit," explained Professor Bell.

Soon Arthur heard plainly the organ notes of "Auld Lang Syne," followed by those of "Yankee Doodle."

"But that's not the human voice," objected Arthur's neighbor to his companion. "Musical sounds we know can be telegraphed."

Just then Mr. Bell spoke again into the transmitter.

"Watson, will you make us a speech?"

There came a few seconds of silence. Then, to the astonishment of all, a voice issued from the telephone. All the five hundred people could hear the sound, and those less than six feet from the instrument had little difficulty in making out the words:

"Ladies and gentlemen: It gives me great pleasure to address you this evening, though I am in Boston and you are in Salem."

"I wonder what those men think now," reflected Arthur.

But the answer was forthcoming.

"We can no longer doubt. We can only admire the sagacity and patience with which Mr. Bell has brought his problem to a successful issue."

At the conclusion of the lecture many of the audience went to the platform to examine the wonderful box more closely. Arthur and Herbert were of the number, you may be sure.

"Is it all right for me to speak to Mr. Bell, Herbert?" whispered Arthur.

"Certainly, if you don't interrupt."

Arthur watched his chance.

"Mr. Bell," he said finally, "you did make the receiver into a transmitter, didn't you? I saw you at Philadelphia, you know."

Mr. Bell's puzzled look wore away.

"Why," he exclaimed, "you're the boy I saw at the Exposition that Sunday afternoon last June, aren't you?" Then he added, before turning away to answer a question that a man was asking, "Better buy a Boston Globe in the morning. You'll find a new triumph for the telephone there."

Arthur bought his Globe the next morning before breakfast. Mr. Bell was right. The paper recorded even more successes than the boys had witnessed the night before. Its account of the evening ended with these words:

"This special by telephone to the Globe has been transmitted in the presence of about twenty, who have thus been witnesses to a feat never before attempted: that is, the sending of a newspaper despatch over the space of eighteen miles by the human voice, all this wonder being accomplished in a time not much longer than would be consumed in an ordinary conversation between two people in the same room."

Probably no child who reads this story can remember when the telephone was not so common an object as a lawn mower or an elevator; but those of us who lived through the years when its wonders were slowly developing can never forget our strange, almost uncanny feeling when the voice of a friend who, we knew, was miles away actually came out of a little iron box.

From that day of the Globe report Arthur watched the telephone grow rapidly into public notice. Salem people invited Mr. Bell to repeat his lecture; leading citizens of Boston, Lowell, Providence, Manchester, and New York within a few weeks clamored for demonstrations in their cities.

By September, 1878, a telephone exchange was set up among the business houses of Boston, with about three hundred subscribers. Two years later the telephone found its way to the little town where Arthur lived, and two instruments were installed—one at the railroad station and another at the lawyer's office.

The next day came the presidential election; and in the evening the lawyer's office was filled with curious men and boys, eager to see whether the telephone would really work or not. Arthur and his father were there, of course. But before any message came, the lawyer had to see a client for a few minutes.

"Here, Arthur, you've used a telephone before. Take my place at the receiver, will you?"

There was no need to ask. Arthur was at the receiver when the lawyer's question was finished. No message came for some time; but at last the bell rang, and Arthur announced proudly:

"He says Florida has gone Republican."

"I knew the thing couldn't be trusted," sputtered an old voter then. "As if the solid South were broken! I'll get my news some other way." And off he went.

"You didn't hear right, I fancy," said the lawyer, returning. "The operator couldn't have said that."

"But he did," insisted Arthur. "I'm sure he did."

"And why not?" quietly asked the school teacher from one corner of the room. "He means the town of Florida, not the state."

"Of course," said everybody.

By 1883, Arthur heard that conversation had been carried on between New York and Chicago, cities one thousand miles apart. "That is all we can hope for," was the general verdict. For a long time it seemed true. But when the country had been covered by a network of wires, there came another long-distance triumph. Communication was open to Omaha, five hundred miles farther west.

And not long ago, Arthur, now a prosperous business man of fifty, a member of the City Club of Boston, sat with several associates around a table at the new club house, each with a telephone in front of him; and over the wires, across three thousand miles of mountain, lake, and prairie, came clearly the voices of the governor of Massachusetts and the mayor of Boston, speaking from the Panama Exposition at San Francisco.

What will be the next triumph of the telephone? To transmit speech around the globe, perhaps. Anyway, here is a newspaper paragraph that asks an interesting question:

"The Mayflower has been called the last frail link binding the Pilgrims to man and habitable earth. With its departure from Plymouth in America that frail link was severed. The Atlantic cable has surely bound the countries together again. Will the telephone and the aeroplane make the desert of the Pilgrims a popular London suburb?"