The two rooms in the attic were too near together for the test, as our
voices would be heard through the air, so I ran a wire especially for
the trial from one of the rooms in the attic down two flights to the
third floor where Williams’ main shop was, ending it near my work bench
at the back of the building. That was the first telephone line. You can
well imagine that both our hearts were beating above the normal rate
while we were getting ready for the trial of the new instrument that
evening. I got more satisfaction from the experiment than Mr. Bell did,
for shout my best I could not make him hear me, but I could hear his
voice and almost catch the words. I rushed downstairs and told him what
I had heard. It was enough to show him that he was on the right track,
and before he left that night he gave me directions for several
improvements in the telephones I was to have ready for the next trial.
[Illustration: _Alexander Graham Bell’s First Telephone_]
I hope my pride in the fact that I made the first telephone, put up the
first telephone wire and heard the first words ever uttered through a
telephone, has never been too ostentatious and offensive to my friends,
but I am sure that you will grant that a reasonable amount of that human
weakness is excusable in me. My pride has been tempered to quite a
bearable degree by my realization that the reason why I heard Bell in
that first trial of the telephone and he did not hear me, was the vast
superiority of his strong vibratory tones over any sound my undeveloped
voice was then able to utter. My sense of hearing, however, has always
been unusually acute, and that might have helped to determine this
result.
The building where these first telephone experiments were made is still
in existence. It is now used as a theater. The lower stories have been
much altered, but that attic is still quite unchanged and a few weeks
ago I stood on the very spot where I snapped those springs and helped
test the first telephone thirty-seven years and seven months before.
(_Editor’s Note: The old building was finally replaced by new
construction in 1931.)_