DEVELOPMENT OF THE TELEPHONE 



take the necessary steps and construct a practical in- 

 strument along the lines outlined in his paper, and the 

 matter dropped out of sight for a decade. 



AN INTERESTING COINCIDENCE 



Meanwhile the Americans had been making ex- 

 periments, and on February 14, 1876, Prof. Alexander 

 Graham Bell, of Boston, and two hours later, on the 

 same day, Elisha Gray, of Chicago, each filed in the 

 patent offices at Washington, a caveat, or provisional 

 specification, of a practical electric telephone. At the 

 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in that year, 

 Gray exhibited a multiplex telegraph, and Bell exhibited 

 his "wonder of wonders," as Lord Kelvin termed that 

 telephone, in addressing the British Association at 

 Glasgow a few weeks later. 



"In the department of telegraphs in the United States 

 section," said Lord Kelvin (then Professor Thomson), 

 "I saw and heard Mr. Elisha Gray's electric telegraph 

 of wonderful construction, which can repeat four dis- 

 patches at the same time in the Morse code, and, 

 with some improvements in detail, this instrument is 

 evidently capable of a fourfold delivery. In the Cana- 

 dian department I heard, 'To be or not to be ? There's 

 the rub,' uttered through a telegraphic wire, and its 

 pronunciation by electricity only made the rallying tone 

 of the monosyllables more emphatic. The wires also 

 repeated some extracts from the New York papers. With 

 my own ears I heard all this, distinctly articulated 

 through the slender circular disk formed by the arma- 



[73] 



