152 nature's flMracles. 



York. Under such conditions the transmis- 

 sion would necessarily be slow, because an 

 armature time will be lost at each repeater. 

 Regarding each repeater as a key, when Chi- 

 cago depresses his key the armature of the 

 next repeater must act, and then the next 

 successively, and all of this takes time, al- 

 though only a small fraction of a- second. 



The repeater was a very delicate instrument 

 and had to be handled by a skilled operator. 

 Every wire must be in its place or the instru- 

 ment would fail to operate. I remember on 

 one occasion in Cleveland that along in the 

 middle of the night the repeater failed to 

 work. The operator knew nothing of the prin- 

 ciple of its operation, so that when it failed he 

 had to appeal to some of his superiors. 



At this time there was no one in the office 

 who knew how to adjust it, so they had to 

 send up to the house of the superintendent and 

 arouse him from his sleep and bring him down 

 to the office. He looked under the table and 

 found that one of the wires had loosened from 

 its binding-post and was hanging down. He 

 said immediately, " Here's the trouble ; I 

 should think you could have seen it yourself." 

 The operator replied, " I did see that, but I 

 didn't think one wire would make any dif- 

 ference." He learned the lesson that all elec- 

 tricians have had to learn that even one wire 

 makes all the difference in the world. But 



