The St. Johns herald., 1895-09-05
THE TELEPHONE IDEA.
First Suggested in This Country
 by the Croaking of Frogs
Something About pr. cushman, the Con- structor of the First Transmitter, and the Manner of His
 Discovery.

It is not common knowledge. except to those familiar with electrical and telephone history, that the first tele- phone was constructed in Racine, Wis. and that the inventor, Dr. $. D. Cush- man, is now a resident of Chicago, says the News, of that city.
 His litigation with the Bell Telephone company, extending over period of ten years and costing one hundred thou sand dollars, has been reported from legal standpoint, but as it is one of MT. Cushman's principles that personal "reminiscences are in bad taste, he has seldom given formal interview. The venerable inventor, seventy-seven years of age, who built the first telegraph lines in this part of the liar west" pursues his business with more alert ness to affairs than the average young man.
 In a corner of the room is large, worn piece of muslin on which is paint ed in thin colors a representation of a telegraph line stretching away in the distance, connected with crude instrument, set on two logs, near which is frog sitting by a stream. This old relic represents the telegraph line of good cedar posts," which Dr. Cushman constructed west from Racine for the Erie & Michigan Telegraph company in 1851, and the experimental lightning arrester which led to his discovery.
 1t is a reminder of the days when Dr. Cushman was associated with Prof. Morse in the pioneer days of teleg- raphy. On his desk is the first tele- phone transmitter, constructed in 1851, twenty-five years before the Bell patents were taken out. It is small, square box, with speaking orifice and containing mechanism on the same principle as that of the modern trans hitter.
 In 1851 Dr. Cushman undertook the construction of a lightning arrester, his object being to take the lightning that struck the wire and run it into the ground, the instrument being so con- structed that it would not interfere with the light current used in telc graphing. This instrument was placed out on the prairie on two logs and in order to know when it had operated a triple magnet with sheet of thin iron at the poles, similar in construction to a modern receiver" was placed in the corner of the box. In case the light ming passed through the instrument the eleetro-magnet would pull this strip of iron down into the range of permanent magnet, which would re- tain it until the instrument was in- spected.
 A similar device was placed in the basement of the building at Racine and connected with the other end of the line. One day while thunderstorm was coming up, and pr. Cushman was watching the instrument, the croa1ing of frogs was heard, thirteen miles away. This is the explanation of how the old painting with the crude instru- ment and the croaking frog is identi- fled with the discovery of the tele- phone.
 Dr. Cushman is the inventor of the fire-alarm system in use in Chicago. IIis patent-ofice reports, he says, would weigh a ton," and contain a great number of his electrical patents. To the priority of Dr. Cushnan there is said to be no doubt, and the contes; of the validity of the Bell patents be- gun in 1855 was at last taken to the United States district court of Boston in 1893, where it is now pending.
 Dr. Cushman is a descendant of the historical Cushmans who came to Vir- ginia in 164o. He was friend of Hor- ace Greeley and most of his prominent contemporaries in what might be called the era of rapid mechanical develop ment. In early life he was a newspa- per reporter. Some twenty years of his life was spent in central Ohio, and he says: 'I never doubted that God made that country"