For forty weeks--long exasperating weeks-- the telephone could do no more than gasp and make strange inarticulate noises. Its educators had not learned how to manage it. Then, on March 10, 1876, IT TALKED. It said distinctly--"MR. WATSON, COME HERE, I WANT YOU." Watson, who was at the lower end of the wire, in the basement, dropped the receiver and rushed with wild joy up three flights of stairs to tell the glad tidings to Bell. "I can hear you!" he shouted breathlessly. "I can hear the WORDS."It was not easy, of course, for the weak young telephone to make itself heard in that noisy workshop.
No one, not even Bell and Watson, was familiar with its odd little voice. Usually Watson, who had a remarkably keen sense of hearing, did the listening; and Bell, who was a professional elocutionist, did the talking. And day by day the tone of the baby instrument grew clearer--a new note in the orchestra of civilization.
On his twenty-ninth birthday, Bell received his patent, No. 174,465--"the most valuable single patent ever issued" in any country. He had created something so entirely new that there was no name for it in any of the world's languages.
In describing it to the officials of the Patent Office, he was obliged to call it "an improvement in telegraphy," when, in truth, it was nothing of the kind. It was as different from the telegraph as the eloquence of a great orator is from the sign-language of a deaf-mute.
Other inventors had worked from the standpoint of the telegraph; and they never did, and never could, get any better results than signs and symbols. But Bell worked from the standpoint of the human voice. He cross-fertilized the two sciences of acoustics and electricity. His study of "Visible Speech" had trained his mind so that he could mentally SEE the shape of a word as he spoke it. He knew what a spoken word was, and how it acted upon the air, or the ether, that carried its vibrations from the lips to the ear.
He was a third-generation specialist in the nature of speech, and he knew that for the transmission of spoken words there must be "a pulsatory action of the electric current which is the exact equivalent of the aerial impulses."Bell knew just enough about electricity, and not too much. He did not know the possible from the impossible. "Had I known more about electricity, and less about sound," he said, "Iwould never have invented the telephone."
What he had done was so amazing, so foolhardy, that no trained electrician could have thought of it. It was "the very hardihood of invention,"and yet it was not in any sense a chance discovery.
It was the natural output of a mind that had been led to assemble just the right materials for such a product.
As though the very stars in their courses were working for this young wizard with the talking wire, the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia opened its doors exactly two months after the telephone had learned to talk. Here was a superb opportunity to let the wide world know what had been done, and fortunately Hubbard was one of the Centennial Commissioners. By his influence a small table was placed in the Department of Education, in a narrow space between a stairway and a wall, and on this table was deposited the first of the telephones.
Bell had no intention of going to the Centennial himself. He was too poor. Sanders and Hubbard had never done more than pay his room-rent and the expense of his experiments.
For his three or four years of inventing he had re-ceived nothing as yet--nothing but his patent.
In order to live, he had been compelled to reorganize his classes in "Visible Speech," and to pick up the ravelled ends of his neglected profession.
But one Friday afternoon, toward the end of June, his sweetheart, Mabel Hubbard, was taking the train for the Centennial; and he went to the depot to say good-bye. Here Miss Hubbard learned for the first time that Bell was not to go. She coaxed and pleaded, without effect.
Then, as the train was starting, leaving Bell on the platform, the affectionate young girl could no longer control her feelings and was overcome by a passion of tears. At this the susceptible Bell, like a true Sir Galahad, dashed after the moving train and sprang aboard, without ticket or baggage, oblivious of his classes and his poverty and of all else except this one maiden's distress. "I never saw a man," said Watson, "so much in love as Bell was."As it happened, this impromptu trip to the Centennial proved to be one of the most timely acts of his life. On the following Sunday after-noon the judges were to make a special tour of inspection, and Mr. Hubbard, after much trouble, had obtained a promise that they would spend a few minutes examining Bell's telephone. By this time it had been on exhibition for more than six weeks, without attracting the serious attention of anybody.
