I must have done other work in the shop besides Bell’s during the winter
and spring of 1875, but I cannot remember a single item of it. I do
remember that when I was not working for Bell I was thinking of his
ideas. All through my recollection of that period runs that
nightmare—the harmonic telegraph, the ill working of which got on my
conscience, for I blamed my lack of mechanical skill for the poor
operation of an invention apparently so simple. Try our best, we could
not make that thing work rightly, and Bell came as near to being
discouraged as I ever knew him to be.
But this spring of 1875 was the dark hour just before the dawn.
If the exact time could be fixed, the date when the conception of the
undulatory or speech-transmitting current took its perfect form in
Bell’s mind would be the greatest day in the history of the telephone,
but certainly June 2, 1875, must always rank next; for on that day the
mocking fiend inhabiting that demonic telegraph apparatus, just as a
now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don’t sort of satanic joke, opened the
curtain that hides from man great Nature’s secrets and gave us a glimpse
as quick as if it were through the shutter of a snap-shot camera, into
that treasury of things not yet discovered. That imp didn’t do this in
any kindly, helpful spirit—any inventor knows he isn’t that kind of a
being—he just meant to tantalize and prove that a man is too stupid to
grasp a secret, even if it is revealed to him. But he hadn’t properly
estimated Bell, though he had probably sized me up all right. That
glimpse was enough to let Bell see and seize the very thing he had been
dreaming about and drag it out into the world of human affairs.
[Illustration: _Gardiner G. Hubbard in 1876_]