Another occasion is burnt into my memory that wasn’t such a triumph over
difficulties. In these lectures we always had another trouble to contend
with, besides the rusty joints in the wires; that was the operators
cutting in, during the lectures, their highest resistance relays, which
enabled them to hear some of the intermittent current effects I sent to
the hall. Inductance, retardation, and all that sort of thing which you
have so largely conquered since were invented long before the telephone
was, and were awaiting her on earth all ready to slam it when Bell came
along. Bell lectured at Lawrence, Massachusetts, one evening in May, and
I prepared to furnish him with the usual program from the laboratory in
Boston.
[Illustration: _Watson’s “Buzzer”_]
But the wire the company assigned us was the worst yet. It worked fairly
well when we tried it in the afternoon, but in the evening every station
on the line had evidently cut in its relay, and do my best I couldn’t
get a sound through to the hall.
The local newspaper generally sent a reporter to my end of the wire to
write up the occurrences there. This is the report of such an envoy as
it appeared in the Lawrence paper the morning after Bell’s lecture
there:
“Mr. Fisher returned this morning. He says that Watson, the organist and
himself occupied the laboratory, sitting in their shirt sleeves with
their collars off. Watson shouted his lungs into the telephone
mouthpiece, ‘Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!’ and receiving no response, inquired of
Fisher if he pardoned for a little ‘hamburg edging’ on his language. Mr.
Fisher endeavored to transmit to his Lawrence townsman the tune of
‘Federal Street’ played upon the cornet, but the air was not
distinguishable here. About 10 P.M., Watson discovered the ‘Northern
Lights’ and found his wires alive with lightning, which was not included
in the original scheme of the telephone. He says the loose electricity
abroad in the world was too much for him.”