434 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



appeared to transmit most readily. " The particular instruments ac- 

 tually used were the ' membrane telephones ' as transmitters and the 

 ' membrane telephone ' and ' iron box magneto receiver ' as receivers." 

 At the end of the week these instruments were replaced in the exhibit 

 space in the gallery. 



During that week thorough experiments were carried out and at 

 their conclusion an award was made to Graham Bell by the judges of 

 the group, while a special report drawn by Sir William Thomson, and 

 a general report prepared by Professor Joseph Henry, secretary of 

 the Smithsonian Institution and chairman of the judges, was published 

 by the government. 



Sir William Thomson said, in part : 



In addition to his electric-phonetic multiple telegraph, Mr. Graham Bell exhibits 

 apparatus by which he has achieved a result of transcendent scientific interest 

 — the transmission of spoken words by electric currents through a telegraph 

 wire. To obtain this result, or even to make the first step towards it — the 

 transmission of different qualities of sounds, such as the vowel sounds — Mr. 

 Bell perceived that he must produce a variation of strength of current in the 

 telegraph wire as nearly as may be in exact proportion to the velocity of a 

 particle of air moved by the sound; and he invented a method of doing so — a 

 piece of iron attached to a membrane, and thus moved to and fro in the neigh- 

 borhood of an electro-magnet — which has proved perfectly successful. . . . This, 

 perhaps the greatest marvel hitherto achieved by the electric telegraph, has 

 been obtained by appliances of quite a homespun and rudimentary character. 

 With somewhat more advanced plans, and more powerful apparatus, we may 

 •confidently expect that Mr. Bell will give us the means of making voice and 

 spoken words audible through tne electric wire to an ear hundreds of miles 

 distant. 



The chairman, Professor Joseph Henry, in his official report, said: 



The telephone of Mr. Bell aims at a still more remarkable result, that of 

 transmitting audible speech through long telegraph lines. In the improved in- 

 strument the result is produced with striking effect, without the employment 

 of an electrical current other than that produced by the mechanical action of 

 the impulse of the breath as it issues from the lungs in producing articulate 

 sounds. . . . Audible speech has in this way been transmitted to a distance of 

 three hundred miles, perfectly intelligible to those who have become accustomed 

 to the peculiarities of certain of the sounds. . . . 



Another of the judges was Professor F. A. P. Barnard, president 

 of Columbia College. A little later he publicly stated that 



Of all instruments of precision and research which the group of Centennial 

 judges was called upon to examine, there was none that occasioned greater 

 interest or that they regarded as of higher novelty and importance than the 

 speaking telephone of Professor A. Graham Bell, 



and he was confident 



that the name of the inventor of the telephone would be handed down to pos- 

 terity with a permanent claim on the gratitude and remembrance of mankind. 



Graham Bell was confident that he could transmit speech from 

 Boston to Philadelphia, and, after his class examinations were over, 

 he endeavored to secure the use of a telegraph circuit for that purpose, 

 but failed because all ' were too busy.' Mr. Hubbard endeavored to 



