VOICE VOYAGES BY THE GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 



115 



possibility of adjustment to the rapidity 

 and immensity of the development. 



When the true understanding - conies, 

 all will unite in directing and guiding 

 and protecting ; then and only then shall 

 we reap the full benefits of man's devel- 

 oping powers and understanding and of 

 man's initiative and enterprise. 



ADDRESS OF DR. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BEEE 



I am really overwhelmed by the realiza- 

 tion of the greatness of the demonstra- 

 tion that has been given us tonight. Won- 

 derful ! Wonderful ! It brings back to 

 mind the significance of the first message 

 ever sent by the Morse telegraph, "What 

 hath God wrought !" 



I am overwhelmed in more ways than 

 one. I do not see what I have had to do 

 with this thing. Many, many minds have 

 contributed to the development of the 

 telephone of today, an army of workers 

 organized under Mr. Vail and Mr. Carty, 

 and the researches of the telephone and 

 telegraph company have been required in 

 order to bring these marvelous results. 



When I try to find out what I have 

 done and look back to the long vista of 

 years, I see only this (holding aloft the 

 first telephone instrument which demon- 

 strated the possibilities of transmitting 

 the voice by electricity), the original Bell 

 telephone, Mr. Watson and myself work- 

 ing hard at it to make it speak. It was a 

 most disappointing introduction to this 

 wonderful art. Mr. Watson could always 

 hear a great deal better than I could. He 

 could hear phone speech sounds and occa- 

 sional words, and I tell you it was a great 

 day, on the ioth day of March, 1876, 

 when at last there was no doubt about 

 it ; complete words and sentences were 

 understood both by Mr. Watson and my- 

 self. I can remember very well talking 

 into the instrument, which was connected 

 with the next room, and said: "Mr. Wat- 

 son, come here, I want to see you." And 

 he instantly came into the room, and I 

 was delighted to know that he had un- 

 derstood. 



It was only a short time ago that I was 

 talking from New York to San Fran- 

 cisco — Mr. Watson in San Francisco and 

 I in New York — and I was asked to re- 

 peat the same sentence which was the 



first to be transmitted over and through 

 this instrument itself, and I put my mouth 

 to this old telephone in New York and 

 called out to Watson in San Francisco : 

 "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." 

 He replied: "It would take me a week to 

 get there now" (see page 298). 



Now I cannot claim very much credit 

 for all this wonderful development. I 

 can see this whole telephone away in the 

 distance and extending from it an army 

 of workers laying wires and extending 

 the influence of the telephone, headed at 

 first by the first President of the Na- 

 tional Geographic Society, Mr. Gardiner 

 Greene Hubbard. Then, as this army of 

 workers extended to this great general, 

 Mr. Vail, who has brought the telephone 

 system in America to completion. 



DREAMS THAT CAME TRUE 



Away back in the old days I dreamed 

 of wires extending all over the country 

 and of people in one part of America 

 talking to people in another part of 

 America. It was the dream of a dreamer, 

 but Mr. Vail has made it come true, and 

 today we have been witnesses of the fact 

 that there is no part of this continent that 

 is inaccessible to the human voice. Mr. 

 Vail has brought this instrument into 

 every home. What would business be 

 without it ? It has even gone into war- 

 fare and into the trenches in Europe ; in 

 fact, Mr. Vail is evidently trying to make 

 the telephone "First in war, first in peace, 

 and first in the hearts of his countrymen." 

 He has covered this continent with a net- 

 work of wires, millions of miles in ex- 

 tent ; he has accomplished the dream of 

 my youth of the wires that should cover 

 this land. 



But our good guest of the evening, Mr. 

 Carty, is going further than this and he 

 is getting out all the wires. It was only 

 a few weeks ago that Mr. Carty and his 

 associates demonstrated the possibility of 

 wireless telephony by talking from Ar- 

 lington here to the Eiffel Tower in 

 France, and a man in Honolulu overheard 

 the conversation. 



Where are wonders going to cease? 

 Why, that is a distance equal to one-third 

 of the circumference of the globe. Is 

 there any part of the globe that Mr. Carty 



