[Illustration: THE BACK OF A MULTIPLE SWITCHBOARD]
[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE TELEPHONE, 109 COURT STREET, BOSTON
On the top floor of this building, in 1875, Prof. Bell carried on his
experiments and first succeeded in transmitting speech by electricity]
How the Telephone Came to Be.
It is hard to realize that there was once a time, not so very many
years ago, when the telephone was regarded as a scientific toy and
hardly anyone could be found willing to invest any money in the
development of the telephone business.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL IN 1876]
[Illustration: THOMAS A. WATSON IN 1874]
The story of Professor Alexander Graham Bell’s wonderful invention is
full of romantic interest and the early days of its exploitation were
replete with dramatic incidents.
~THE MEN WHO MADE THE TELEPHONE~
Young Bell had come to America in 1870 in search of health, the family
settling at Brantford, Canada. He numbered among his forebears many
distinguished professional men. For three generations the Bells had
taught the laws of speech in the universities of Edinburgh, Dublin and
London. He himself was an accomplished elocutionist and an expert in
vocal physiology.
During the year spent in Canada in regaining his health, Bell taught
his father’s method of visible speech to a tribe of Mohawk Indians and
began to think about the “harmonic telegraph.”
In 1871 young Alexander Bell accepted an offer from the Boston Board
of Education to teach the “visible speech” method in a school for deaf
mutes in that city.
For two years he devoted himself to the work with great success. He was
appointed a professor in the Boston University and opened a school of
“Vocal Physiology” which was at once successful.
He might have continued his career as a teacher had it not been that
his active brain still clung to the “harmonic telegraph” idea and his
inventive genius demanded an outlet.
[Illustration: PROF. BELL’S VIBRATING REED]
So we find him in 1874 working out his idea of the “harmonic
telegraph,” the perfection of which meant a fortune to the young
inventor. That he never realized his goal was due to the fact that
while experimenting, he made a discovery which led to a far greater
invention and one that was fraught with more benefit to mankind than
the “harmonic telegraph” could ever have been.
It was while working with his faithful man Friday, Thomas A. Watson,
in the dingy little workrooms on Court Street, Boston, that Bell got
the inspiration which made him turn from the “harmonic telegraph” to
devote himself to the invention which was destined to make his name
famous--the speaking telephone.
~THE FIRST SOUND OVER A WIRE~
Mr. Watson has dramatically described the incident as follows:
“On the afternoon of June 2, 1875, we were hard at work on the same
old job, testing some modification of the instruments. Things were
badly out of tune that afternoon in that hot garret, not only the
instruments, but, I fancy, my enthusiasm and my temper, though Bell
was as energetic as ever. I had charge of the transmitters, as usual,
setting them squealing one after the other, while Bell was retuning
the receiver springs one by one, pressing them against his ear as I
have described. One of the transmitter springs I was attending to
stopped vibrating and I plucked it to start it again. It didn’t start
and I kept on plucking it, when suddenly I heard a shout from Bell in
the next room, and then out he came with a rush, demanding, ‘What did
you do then? Don’t change anything. Let me see!’ I showed him. It was
very simple. The make-and-break points of the transmitter spring I was
trying to start had become welded together, so that when I snapped the
spring the circuit had remained unbroken while that strip of magnetized
steel by its vibration over the pole of its magnet, was generating that
marvelous conception of Bell’s--a current of electricity that varied in
intensity precisely as the air was varying in density within hearing
distance of that spring. That undulatory current had passed through
the connecting wire to the distant receiver which, fortunately, was
a mechanism that could transform that current back into an extremely
faint echo of the sound of the vibrating spring that had generated it,
but what was still more fortunate, the right man had that mechanism
at his ear during that fleeting moment, and instantly recognized
the transcendent importance of that faint sound thus electrically
transmitted. The shout I heard and his excited rush into my room were
the result of that recognition. The speaking telephone was born at
that moment. Bell knew perfectly well that the mechanism that could
transmit all the complex vibrations of one sound could do the same for
any sound, even that of speech. That experiment showed him that the
complex apparatus he had thought would be needed to accomplish that
long-dreamed result was not at all necessary, for here was an extremely
simple mechanism operating in a perfectly obvious way, that could do
it perfectly. All the experimenting that followed that discovery, up
to the time the telephone was put into practical use, was largely a
matter of working out the details. We spent a few hours verifying the
discovery, repeating it with all the differently tuned springs we had,
and before we parted that night Bell gave me directions for making the
first electric speaking telephone. I was to mount a small drumhead
of gold-beater’s skin over one of the receivers, join the center of
the drumhead to the free end of the receiving spring and arrange a
mouthpiece over the drumhead to talk into. His idea was to force the
steel spring to follow the vocal vibrations and generate a current of
electricity that would vary in intensity as the air varies in density
during the utterance of speech sounds. I followed these directions and
had the instrument ready for its trial the very next day. I rushed it,
for Bell’s excitement and enthusiasm over the discovery had aroused
mine again, which had been sadly dampened during those last few weeks
by the meagre results of the harmonic experiments. I made every part of
that first telephone myself, but I didn’t realize while I was working
on it what a tremendously important piece of work I was doing.
[Illustration: WHAT THE FIRST TELEPHONE LOOKED LIKE