THE TELEPHONE 335 



when the trees were in flower the owners learned from the 

 Weather Bureau through the telephone that a frost was 

 coming that night, which would injure the blossoms. The 

 farmers telephoned to the towns for help to come and assist 

 in lighting smudge pots to ward off the frost. In this way 

 the crop was saved. 



Effect of the telephone. The telephone has had a most 

 important effect on the development of the country and 

 on the spirit of its people. It has helped to make a unity 

 of feeling and maintain a spirit of cooperation that would 

 not have been possible without it. It has helped to obliter- 

 ate narrow state and sectional lines, and to develop a national 

 spirit that makes us one people and one nation. It has a 

 broadening and educative effect. It has been the climax 

 of those recent inventions which have helped to bring people 

 closer together. Railways and steamboats carry letters, 

 the telegraph transmits messages instantly, but greatest of 

 all is the telephone, which brings men practically face to 

 face, carries speech over the electric wire, and makes message 

 and answer both instantaneous. 



History of the telephone. The inventor of the telephone 

 was Alexander G. Bell. He was born in Scotland and moved 

 to Canada when he was twenty-three years old. Two years 

 later he moved to this country and became a professor in 

 Boston University. For several years he worked on his 

 idea of some method of direct communication by means of 

 the voice at a distance. In 1876 he finally succeeded in 

 making an instrument which would carry the human voice. 

 He obtained a patent on this immediately and in the same 

 year exhibited it at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadel- 

 phia. Here it received much praise and attention. At 

 first it was generally regarded as a toy without practical 

 application. In getting the telephone started as a com- 

 mercial proposition Bell and his friends who were financing 

 the proposition had considerable difficulty. 



