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made upon the street changed the whole course 

 of my thinking and solved the problem. The 

 incident I refer to took place in Milwaukee, 

 where I was then experimenting. One day 

 while out on an errand I noticed two boys with 

 fruit-cans in their hands having a thread at- 

 tached to the center of the bottom of each can 

 and stretched across the street, perhaps 100 

 feet apart. They were talking to each other, 

 the one holding his mouth to his can and the 

 other his ear. At that time I had not heard of 

 this " lovers' telegraph," although it was old. 

 It is said to have been used in China 2000 

 years ago. 



The two boys seemed to be conversing in a 

 low tone with each other and my interest was 

 immediately aroused. I took the can out of 

 one of the boy's hands (rather rudely as I re- 

 member it now), and putting my ear to the 

 mouth of it I could hear the voice of the boy 

 across the street. I conversed with him a mo- 

 ment, then noticed how the cord was connected 

 nt the bottom of the two cans, when, suddenly, 

 tin- problem of electrical speech-transmission 

 was solved in my mind. I did not have an op- 

 portunity immediately to construct an instru- 

 ment, as I had a partner who was furnishing 

 money f.r tin- <li-ve1iiimicnt <>f the harmonic 

 i-aph and would not listen to any col- 

 il experiments. I remember sitting down 

 by this partner one day and telling him what I 



