SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 



arrangement of the ear acts in accordance with mechan- 

 ical laws was strikingly shown by an experiment of Bell 

 with his telephone, in which part of one of his earlier 

 instruments was actually made of the human ear. 



AN EARLY CONCEPTION OF THE TELEPHONE 



The possibility of sending verbal messages at long 

 distances through some other medium besides that of the 

 atmosphere was conceived at least two centuries before 

 the accomplishment of the practical telephone in 1876. 

 In 1667 the English scientist, Robert Hooke, wrote of a 

 method of communication by telephone as follows: 



"It is now possible to hear a whisper at a furlong's 

 distance, it having been already done; and perhaps 

 the nature of the thing would not make it more possible, 

 though that furlong should be ten times multiplied. And 

 though some famous authors have affirmed it impos- 

 sible to hear through the thinnest plate of Muscovy 

 glass, yet I know a way by which it is easy enough to 

 hear one speak through a wall a yard thick. 



"It has not yet been thoroughly examined how far 

 otacousticons may be improved, nor what other ways 

 there may be of quickening our hearing, or conveying 

 sound through other bodies than the air; for that is not 

 the only medium I can assure the reader that I have, by 

 the help of a distended wire, propagated the sound to a 

 very considerable distance in an instant, or with as 

 seemingly quick a motion as that of light, at least incom- 

 parably quicker than that which at the same time was 

 propagated through the air; and this not only in a 



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