120 nature's /IMracles. 



they were used at first. The quadruplex is 

 very extensively used by the Western Union 

 Telegraph Company and others. It would be 

 difficult to explain it in a popular article, so 

 we will not attempt it. There is another form 

 of multiple telegraph that was used on the 

 Postal Telegraph line when it first started 

 which was invented and perfected by the 

 writer that can be more easily explained. 



In 1874 I discovered a method of transmit- 

 ting musical tones telegraphically, and the 

 thing that set my mind in that direction was 

 a domestic incident. It is a curious fact that 

 most inventions have their beginnings in some 

 incident or observation that comes within the 

 experience of some one who is able to see and 

 interpret the meaning of such incidents or 

 observations. I do not mean to say that in- 

 ventions are usually the result of a happy 

 thought, or accident; the germ may be, but 

 the germ has to have the right kind of soil 

 to take root in and the right kind of culture 

 afterward. It is a rare thing that an inven- 

 tion, either of commercial or scientific im- 

 portance, ever comes to perfection without 

 hard work midnight oil and daylight toil; 

 and it is rarely, if ever, that a discovery or 

 an invention based upon a discovery does not 

 have, sooner or later, a practical use, although 

 we sometimes have to wait centuries to find it 

 put. We h^d to wait forty-four years after 



