436 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Scotland. On that occasion men eminent in their respective profes- 

 sions listened with the deepest interest, while the president, Sir 

 William Thomson (now Lord Kelvin), gave a vivid description of his 

 visit to the Centennial, and stated that the most marvelous of all the 

 wonderful exhibits he had seen in America was a pair of rudely-con- 

 structed telephones ! 



Then he explained to the members how surprising it all seemed 

 when on that memorable Sabbath in June, 1876, to his listening ear 

 came the words spoken at the distant end of the line; and he added: 



All this my own ears heard, spoken to me with unmistakable distinctness by 

 this circular disk armature of just such another little electro-magnet as this 

 which I hold in my hand. . . . This, the greatest by far of all marvels of the 

 electric telegraph, is due to a young countryman of our own, Mr. Graham 

 Bell, now becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States. Who can but 

 admire the hardihood of the invention which devised such a very slight means 

 to realize the mathematical conception that, if electricity is to convey all the 

 delicacies of quality which distinguish articulate speech, the strength of this 

 current must vary continuously and as nearly as may be in simple proportion 

 to the velocity of a particle of air engaged in constituting the sound? 



Sir William Thomson was then and is now the leading electrician 

 of the world. And it was this generous endorsement of Alexander 

 Graham Bell's invention that brought the telephone to the attention 

 of scientific bodies in all countries, and led learned men in all lands 

 to investigate its merits and to strive to improve its technical value. 

 For in its remarkable simplicity the invention was a disappointment 

 to many men, until practical experience demonstrated that the more 

 elaborate copies were no more serviceable as speech-transmitting de- 

 vices than the primitive original instrument. Nor during all the in- 

 tervening years that have elapsed since 1876 has any inventor or any 

 mechanician or any scientist ever suggested a more complete or a 

 simpler description of the conception of the electric-speaking telephone 

 and its governing principles than Graham Bell embodied in his appli- 

 cation for a patent. 



Yet that simple invention has exerted a far more potent influence 

 than any of the more attractive fruits of inventive genius in revolu- 

 tionizing and enriching custom and method in almost every branch of 

 industry, of commerce and of society. And no other invention has so 

 marvelously increased the scope of human usefulness and intelligent 

 activity. With its aid time and distance are virtually eliminated, and 

 Maine and Missouri and Mississippi and Minnesota are distant from 

 each other only the length of a telephone call. 



Yet marvelous as was the achievement of inventing the electric- 

 speaking telephone, equally meritorious was the breadth of mind that 

 could entertain at a time when poverty was pressing a prophetic vision 

 of one vast transcontinental telephone system uniting every important 

 village, town and city with wire highways over which messages would 

 speed as quickly as thoughts are spoken. 



