BEGINNINGS OF THE TELEPHONE i8i 



so striking as when a voltaic battery was employed, w^here- 

 fore we thought it best to exhibit_only the latter form of 

 instrument. 



The interest excited by the first published accounts of the 

 operation of the telephone led many persons to investigate 

 the subject, and I doubt not that numbers of experi- 

 menters independently discovered that permanent magnets 

 might be employed instead of voltaic batteries. Indeed, 

 Professor Dolbear of Tufts college, not only claims to have 

 discovered the magneto-electric telephone, but, I understand, 

 charges me with having obtained the idea from him through 

 the medium of a mutual friend. 



A still more powerful form of apparatus was constructed 

 by using a powerful compound horseshoe magnet in place of 

 the straight rod which had been previously used. Indeed, 

 the sounds produced by means of this instrument were of 

 sufficient loudness to be faintly audible to a large audience, 

 and in this condition the instrument was exhibited in the 

 Essex institute, in Salem, Massachusetts, on the 12th of 

 February, 1877, on which occasion a short speech shouted 

 into a similar telephone in Boston sixteen miles away, was 

 heard b}^ the audience in Salem. The tones of the speaker's 

 voice were distinctly audible to an audience of six hundred 

 persons but the articulation was only distinct at a distance 

 of about six feet. On the same occasion, also, a report of the 

 lecture was transmitted by word of mouth from Salem to 

 Boston, and published in the papers the next morning. 



From the iron plate form of telephone to the pres- 

 ent form of the instrument is but a step. It is, in fact, the 

 arrangement in a portable form, the magnet being placed 

 inside the handle and a more convenient form of mouthpiece 

 provided 



It was always my belief that a certain ratio would be found 

 between the several parts of a telephone, and that the size of 

 the instrument was immaterial; but Professor Peirce was 

 the first to demonstrate the extreme smallness of the magnets 

 which might be employed. And here, in order to show the 

 parallel lines in which we were working, I may mention the 

 fact that two or three days after I had constructed a telephone 



