THE TELEPHONE.

When the telegraph was invented, years ago, it seemed little less than a miracle that a message could be dictated in one city and received almost instantaneously in another city far distant from the sender. Scientists, however, began at once on the invention of something more wonderful. The telegraph lacks in one respect. By it messages must be sent exactly as dictated and cannot be corrected until the reply is received. In a sense, sending and receiving messages by telegraph is a form of conversation, but a conversation at arm's-length. To carry on a real conversation at long distances would be a great advance. An instrument prepared for this purpose would be called a telephone.

In 1875 Alexander Graham Bell invented the first successful electric telephone. This was exhibited at Salem, Massachusetts, and at Philadelphia at the Centennial Exhibition, and a patent for it was obtained. The apparatus of Bell's telephone is very simple, and practically consists of four parts: the battery, the wire which runs from the speaker to the hearer, a diaphragm against which the vibrations of the air produced by the voice of the speaker strike, and another diaphragm at the other end of the wire which reproduces similar vibrations and sends them to the ear of the listener. Elisha Gray of Boston made a similar invention and applied for a patent two hours after Bell's application was filed. The invention of Mr. Bell has proved a decided success. All telephonic operations, since this invention, have been based upon the instrument which he patented in 1876.

Mr. Bell was the son of a distinguished Scotch educator, Alexander Melville Bell. The father is noted for the invention of a new method for improving impediments in speech. This system of instruction is called "Bell's Visible Speech." It is used with great success in teaching deaf-mutes to speak.

His son Alexander was born in Edinburgh in 1847 and was educated at the University of Edinburgh. He removed to London when he was twenty years of age and was for a time in the University there. Three years later he went to Canada with his father, and at the age of twenty-five took up his residence in the United States, and became professor of vocal physiology in Boston University. He had been in this country but three years when he made his great invention, and its complete success gave him immense wealth. Later he invented the "photophone," in which a vibratory beam of light is substituted for a wire in conveying speech. This instrument has attracted much attention but has not proved of practical use. Professor Bell is a member of various learned societies and has published many scientific papers. His present home is in Washington.

Within ten years the art of telephoning has rapidly developed. This has stimulated inventions and brought into use a vast number of special contrivances for local and long-distance transmission. The principal inventors of these new contrivances are Bell, Berliner, Edison, Hughes, Dolbear, Gray, Blake, and Peirce.

Nearly all of the telephone business of our country is carried on under licenses from the American Bell Telephone Company. The telephone lines at present in the United States would aggregate a distance of more than six hundred thousand miles, and there are more than half a million instruments in our country alone. The longest telephone line extends from Portland, Maine, via Boston, New York, and Chicago, to Milwaukee, a distance of more than thirteen hundred miles.

Let us consider for a moment the wonders of this marvelous invention, as compared with another no less marvelous in its way.

In 1867 Anson Burlingame was appointed by the Chinese Government special envoy to the United States and the great European governments, with power to frame treaties of friendship with those nations. This was an honor never before conferred on a foreigner. Mr. Burlingame accepted the appointment and, at the head of a large mission of distinguished Chinese officials, arrived in this country early in 1868, negotiated with our Government the "Burlingame Treaty," proceeded the same year to England, thence to France, the next year to Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and Prussia, and finally reached Russia early in 1870. He died in St. Petersburg after a few days' illness, on the 23d of February.

Now see what the telegraph did. His death occurred about half-past nine in the morning. As soon as possible the fact was telegraphed to our minister in Paris. He forwarded the news to our minister in London; by him it was cabled across the Atlantic, transmitted from the cable to Washington and delivered to Nathaniel P. Banks, a member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts. General Banks read the dispatch to the House, and delivered offhand an extended eulogy upon the distinguished son of Massachusetts. That speech of General Banks was written out, sent to the telegraph office, transmitted by the electric current to the various cities of the country, put into type, printed in the evening newspapers, and the writer of this chapter read it at four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day that Mr. Burlingame died. This was done as early as 1870.

But what is that compared to the greater wonders of the telephone? That a man can "talk into" the little instrument, and his voice be heard and recognized, and his words understood, by his friend in a city five hundred or one thousand miles away, is indeed a miracle. Consider for a moment what is done by means of the switchboard in the central telephone office of a great city. Every one of the thousands of subscribers has his own instrument for transmitting and receiving messages. One of these subscribers rings a bell in his house or his business office which rings another bell at the central station; the attendant inquires "Hello! what number?" and receives a reply, "four, naught, eight, Tremont." The attendant by a simple switch, turned by a touch of the hand, makes the connection and rings the bell of that subscriber whose number is "408 Tremont." Number "408 Tremont" steps to the instrument and in a quiet voice says "Hello! who is it?" Thus these two persons are placed in direct communication, and can talk with each other, back and forth, as long as they please.

This conversation is carried on between two different sections of the city where these two men live, but the same conversation may with equal ease be carried on between Boston and New York, between Boston and Washington, or between New York and Chicago. Thus time and distance are annihilated and the whole world stands, as it were, face to face.

But the marvel does not end here. The above conversation is carried on by means of a continuous wire which runs from one place to the other. If there are parallel wires, strange to say, the vibrations carried on in the one wire are liable to create, by induction, similar vibrations in the parallel wire. Here is an illustration:

Nearly twenty years ago, soon after the invention came into use, three gentlemen in Providence, Rhode Island, put up a private line between their three houses, making a circuit. Upon this line they carried on experiments and made a number of important discoveries. The evening was the time when they principally used their private telephone line. On a certain Tuesday evening these three gentlemen, conversing one with another, suddenly found themselves listening to strains of music. All three of them heard the same thing: the sound of a cornet and of one or two other musical instruments; then singing and a soprano voice. They wrote down the names of the pieces that were sung and the tunes that were played upon the instruments. They had no knowledge of the source of these sounds.

The next day, and for days following, these gentlemen went about the city inquiring of their friends everywhere if they knew of a concert on that Tuesday night where such pieces were sung and such tunes were played. Nobody had any knowledge of the affair. At length one of the gentlemen published an article in the Providence Journal, describing what he had heard through his telephone wire on that Tuesday evening, giving the date, and asking any one who could inform him what the concert was and where it was, to give him the desired information. Then it transpired that this concert was a telephonic experiment.

The performers were at Saratoga, New York, and they were connected by a telephone wire with friends in New York City. The experiment had plainly demonstrated that the sounds made in singing and in playing numerous instruments could be clearly understood, by means of the telephone, from Saratoga to New York City. But it proved more than this. The vibrations in that telephone wire between Saratoga and New York induced the same vibrations in the parallel wire of the Western Union Telegraph Company. These vibrations were continued through New York City to Providence and onward. The private telephone line of these gentlemen was parallel to the wire of the Western Union Company which had been thus affected, and these vibrations were picked off from the telegraph wire and conveyed by this parallel telephone wire to the receivers at these three houses.

What will be the next wonderful invention? The telegraph transmits your thoughts and delivers them in writing; the telephone transmits your thoughts and delivers them to the ear by sounds. Some day, perhaps, you may step into a cabinet in Boston and have your photograph taken in New York City by aid of an electric wire, the telephote. Just as the telephone transmits the sounds, the telephote may transmit the light and give not only light and shade, but the colors of the solar spectrum.