THE TELEPHONE BUILDING AT EL PASO, TEXAS, EROM WHICH GENERAL PERSHING 



TALKED TO THE 80O MEMBERS AND GUESTS OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC 



SOCIETY BANQUET AT WASHINGTON, D. C. 



A NATION'S HEART BEAT 



But this was not yet the supreme test — 

 the test that brought the guests to their 

 feet with hearts beating fast, souls aflame 

 with patriotism, and minds staggered as 

 wonder had followed wonder as minute 

 followed minute. 



Now a screen was stretched across the 

 end of the banquet-hall, a moving-picture 

 machine was wheeled into action, and the 

 Star Spangled Banner flashed its thrilling 

 beauty upon the screen. 



Over at Arlington wireless station a 

 phonograph began to play. Out of its 

 vibrant throat leaped a nation's patriot- 

 ism expressed in song. A wireless trans- 

 mitter gathered the notes and gave them 

 to the Hertzian waves. The sounds that 

 the phonograph itself released into the 

 air were soon lost. They were as much 



slower than the wireless impulses they 

 started as a snail is slower than the fastest 

 big-gun projectile. 



For nature made sound travel 360 

 yards a second, while the wireless tele- 

 phone has given it a speed of 186,000 

 miles a second. Thus a wireless message 

 envelops the whole earth in the time that 

 a sound in its native element spreads over 

 a circle 144 feet in diameter. Dr. Bell 

 has made the human voice able to travel 

 nearly a million times as fast as it could 

 before he invented the telephone. 



It was less than the proverbial twink- 

 ling of an eye between the utterance of 

 the sound by the phonograph at Arling- 

 ton and its receipt in the 800 receivers in 

 the banquet-hall ; and as it floated in 

 gently and softly, yet clearly and im- 

 pressively, its stirring appeal moved every 



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